


When Silence Falls

by BadWolfGirl01



Series: Dreamverse [3]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: "who the hell is river song?" part two, Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon Relationships, Canon Rewrite, F/M, Fluff, Mystery, Non-Canon Relationship, Plotty, Romance, Season/Series 06, Steven Moffat Era, Time Lord Rose Tyler
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2018-09-19 13:13:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 36,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9442166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadWolfGirl01/pseuds/BadWolfGirl01
Summary: After a human wedding, courtesy of Amy Pond, and a proper bonding, the Doctor and the Dreamer return to the stars, sometimes accompanied by Amy and Rory. But their seemingly-perfect life comes crashing down with a non-linear encounter at Lake Silencio, devastating foreknowledge that must be hidden from the Doctor at any cost. To make matters worse, every new adventure seems to reveal another piece of the puzzle that is River Song--the one mystery the Doctor and the Dreamer would rather not unravel.But some things are inevitable; all loops must be closed, or the universe will pay the price. So why can't the Dreamer stop thinking up ways to save the Doctor?And with Bad Wolf finally gone forever, why does the universe ask the questionwhat will happen when the Wolf's Pack goes to war?(Series 6 rewrite in the Dreamverse; sequel to "She Who Dreams". Chapters 4-8 were co-written with anarchitect. Due to circumstances, the rest of the fic will be finished by BadWolfGirl01 alone.)





	1. The Impossible Astronaut--Part One

**Author's Note:**

> Here we go! Shortish chapter, but I wanted to post it and I've gotten this far in my outline so... Beta read by anarchitect / thevoiceoflightcity.

The Impossible Astronaut--Part One

“He’s trying to get our attention.” Amy puts the history book down. “I mean, look at this. It’s like he’s being deliberately ridiculous.”

The doorbell rings.

“What, like he’s waving to us from back in history?” Rory asks. He rolls his eyes, goes to open the door, takes the letters from the postman.

“Why not? It’s the sort of thing he’d do,” Amy argues.

“Yeah… but why?”

“He said he’d be in touch.” She shrugs.

Rory hands her the mail. “Two months ago.”

“Two months is  _ nothing _ for him and the Dreamer, you know that. Hang on, what’s this?”

A deep, dark blue envelope emblazoned with a gold-script ‘4’.

“What is it?” Rory comes closer, peers over her shoulder. She opens the envelope, looks at the letter inside--

“I think it’s an invitation--look, date and time and a map reference.” Amy grins.

“Who’s it from?”

“No signature. But look,” and she shows him the envelope again. “TARDIS blue.”

~o*o~

Within the grey walls of Stormcage, a young blonde also receives mail. She looks within the dark blue envelope, grins, and from beneath a blanket she pulls a vortex manipulator.

The guard in the hallway runs to the phone. “You better get down here, sir,” he says, voice trembling. “She’s doing it again. Doctor Song, sir.”

River laughs, buckling the vortex manipulator on her wrist and tucking a sonic blaster--she’s kept it hidden since Jack got it for her, and the guards have no idea she has it--in the holster on her hip.

“She’s packing. Says she’s going to some planet called America.”

With another laugh, River waves at the guard and winks. “I’ll be back,” she calls out, then her hand slams down on the button and she vanishes in a crackle of blue light.

~o*o~

When Amy and Rory disembark from the school bus, the first thing they notice is River Song standing there, waiting for her. River grins and waves, and the school bus pulls away to reveal the Dreamer casually leaning against the hood of a blue car.

“That’s not TARDIS blue,” River points out with a cheeky grin.

“Closest I could find.” The Dreamer laughs. “Long time no see, Amy, Rory! How are you?”

“Two months,” Amy says. “I’m surprised you waited that long to get in touch.”

River rolls her eyes. “Only two months? Sweetie, you’ve got no patience.”

“Well, actually…” Rory puts in. “I mean, two--”

The Dreamer shakes her head, cutting across his speech. “Spoilers.”

“Hello!”

All four jump and spin around to see the Doctor standing about five feet away, beaming like a madman. And wearing a Stetson.

“Hello, Sweetie,” River says, then before the Doctor can respond she pulls out her blaster and shoots the Stetson off his head.

“Oi! I wear a Stetson now. Stetsons are cool,” he says in an injured voice.

He leaves the hat on the ground.

There’s a diner just down the road, and that’s where they head, and it’s been a while since she saw the Time Lords but Amy’s pretty sure that something’s going on. Something bigger than just going on an adventure. Because while who knows how long it’s been for them, when the Doctor and the Dreamer got married they were a whole lot more affectionate.

And the Dreamer’s never made a habit of staring at the Doctor with an almost quizzical look on her face.

They somehow manage to cram themselves all in one table, and Amy turns to River. “So how’s Jack?”

Rory looks up at the immortal man’s name. “And where is he, anyway?”

River blinks and shrugs. “It’s not like we live together,” she says, laughing. “I have no idea where he is. As for how he is… well, alive.”

The Doctor watches River, and for a moment Amy sees a deep sorrow in his eyes, and something more, something she can’t quite place but is certain she should recognize, and then the Dreamer speaks and the moment is broken.

“So why are we all here?” the Time Lady asks. There’s something strange in her eyes, and if Amy didn’t know better she would almost call it distrust.

(she’s never seen anything other than trust in her eyes before)

“I’ve been running,” the Doctor says quietly. Not meeting any of their eyes. “Faster than I’ve ever run, and I’ve been running my whole life. Now, it’s time for me to stop. And tonight, I’m going to need you all with me.”

“Okay,” Amy says. “We’re here. So what’s up?”

He smiles. “A picnic. And then a trip. Somewhere different, somewhere brand new.”

“Where?” Rory asks.

“Space, 1969.”

~o*o~

A picnic. By the lakeside.

Not exactly what the Dreamer was expecting when she received a TARDIS-blue envelope marked with a golden ‘2’ and containing space-time coordinates and the instructions not to tell her Doctor. 

She’d tried to act normal, but it was hard--how far in the future exactly  _ was _ this Doctor, anyway? And where was she?

“Salud!” the Doctor cheers, and they toast. The Dreamer clinks her glass of wine with Amy’s, then River’s.

“Since when do you drink wine?” Amy asks, and the Doctor laughs.

“I’m 1103, I’m sure I must’ve drunk it some time.”

He lifts the bottle of wine and takes a swig, and the Dreamer knows what’s going to happen a split second before it does. Sure enough, he leans over and spits it out, coughing. “Oh, that’s horrid.”

Amy laughs. The Doctor looks sheepish. “I thought it would taste more like the gums.”

Amy looks over and seems to freeze, but the Dreamer doesn’t pay that close attention. Something  _ tugs _ at her timesense, something cold and hard and unyielding, and she swallows.

“Ah, the moon. Look at it. Of course, you lot did a lot more than look, didn't you? Big, silvery thing in the sky. You couldn't resist it. Quite right.” The Doctor grins.

“The moon landing was in ‘69,” Rory starts. “Is that where we’re going?”

“No. A lot more happens in 69 than anyone remembers. Human beings. I thought I'd never get done saving you.”

A truck pulls up nearby.

“Who’s he?” Amy asks, nodding at the truck. The Doctor stand and looks at the truck for a moment, but doesn’t answer.

“Oh, my God,” River chokes out suddenly.

The Dreamer spins around, stares. Near the edge of the lake, there stands a--

An astronaut?

“You all need to stay back,” the Doctor says, dropping the wine bottle, stepping towards the spacesuit. “Whatever happens now, you do not interfere.” He turns, looks back over his shoulder, finally meeting the Dreamer’s eyes for the first time. “Clear?”

She swallows, nods, suddenly terrified. But she can  _ feel _ it, the choking-grasping-hard knot of a fixed point.

(but what’s fixed?)

And she trusts him, always has, trusts him with everything--that’s why the bond.

(it’s called love)

He nods back, something painful in his eyes, and turns and walks towards the edge of the lake.

“That’s an astronaut,” Rory says slowly. “That’s an Apollo astronaut in a lake.”

“Yeah.” Amy steps forward, stands next to the Dreamer. “What’s happening? What’s he doing?”

River says nothing, standing in place, and her eyes flicker towards the Dreamer and she realizes River knows. River feels it too.

(that should be impossible)

The Doctor says something, they can’t tell what, and the astronaut lifts its visor. The Dreamer feels her hearts clench as she watched the Doctor bow his head, and then the astronaut extends an arm.

(No no no what’s happening?)

And shoots.

Amy screams. “Doctor!”

The Dreamer and River get her stopped before she goes too far. “Amy, stay back!” River tells her, holding one arm. Amy fights, gasping, but lets them hold her there--

Then the gold regeneration energy begins to flow and eddy in his hands and his face and suddenly the Dreamer  _ knows _ there’s something wrong--she trusts him, even though she doesn’t understand, but he wouldn’t just let someone shoot him without reason, there’s something there, some reason for it, and then he’s regenerating--

(this doesn’t feel like a regeneration the timelines are all wrong)

There’s another shot.

(nononononoyoucant)

She screams, drops Amy and runs, and River’s yelling at her to stay back but she  _ can’t _ , this is wrong this isn’t what was supposed to happen he wouldn’t do this to her and the astronaut is leaving but she doesn’t  _ care _ , the only thing that matters is the Doctor--

The Dreamer falls to her knees beside him. She can hear River shooting at the astronaut but she stares at the Doctor’s face--still, white, no golden energy, and no this is  _ wrong _ ! Her hands are on his face, and she reaches, desperate, she’s sobbing and she can’t breathe and her respiratory bypass has kicked in now and still there’s  _ nothing _ there--no silver-and-blue waiting to twine with her pink-and-gold, something so foreign and strange she can hardly comprehend it, because he can’t be dead there’s no way.

(but his mind is gone and the bond screams and it’s a wonder her Doctor hasn’t come yet)

(he’s not her Doctor but he will be in a couple hundred years and she’s not here)

(and she’s screaming)

“Rose,” River’s saying, “Rose, Arkytior,  _ please! _ ”

The sound of the Gallifreyan name from River’s lips pulls her back to herself, and she stares up at the blonde woman. Amy’s on the other side of the Doctor on her knees, Rory behind her, and both of them are crying but they don’t feel it not like she does and suddenly something very cold squeezes her hearts and then she realizes--

There’s a reason, he invited them for a reason, he’d do anything to spare her this pain, this is somehow better--

(wouldn’t he? Isn’t it?)

There’s an old man standing behind River, the old man who got out of the truck, and something latches onto him. He’s the key, right now, there’s nothing she can learn from the Doctor’s body--and suddenly she’s ice, cold and hard and sharp.

She stands, breathes again, every motion cold and coiled and precise, tall and regal and utterly alien, and somewhere in the old man’s eyes she sees a bit of fear and something wild and feral within her snarls victory.

“Who are you.”

“Canton Everett Delaware III.” Canton meets her eyes, holds them for a long moment, then finally looks away. “He said you’d need this,” and he gestures to the can of gasoline.

River sucks in a breath. “A Time Lord's body is a miracle. Even a dead one. There are whole empires out there who'd rip this world apart for just one cell. We can't leave him here. Or anywhere.”

Arkytior turns, looks at Amy and Rory, dimly registering the way they almost flinch back from her. “We burn our dead.” Her voice sounds strange even to her own ears.

Rory nods slowly, looks around. “There’s a boat. If--” He licks his lips, swallows. “If we’re going to do this, we should do it properly.”

“How can you accept this?” Amy cries. “He’s not dead, he can’t be dead.”

Arkytior whirls, pins the redhead with a hard gaze. “Oh, he’s dead,” she bites out. “Do not presume that I’ve just ‘accepted’ this, as you put it, Amelia Pond. Time can be rewritten, but not all of it. This is a fixed point, and everything that just happened must always happen this exact way. Do you understand?” 

Her voice cracks like a whip, hard and cold and biting. Amy nods shakily, and she turns back to Canton, satisfied.

“Why are you here?”

Canton pulls something out of his jacket. “The same reason as you.”

River steps closer, pulls out her own invitation, holds it next to the envelope Canton holds out. A match. Canton’s envelope is labeled with a ‘5’, Arkytior notices, and she lifts her eyes to his.

“Doctor Song. Dreamer. Amy. Rory.” He nods at each of them in turn. “I won’t be seeing you again, but you’ll be seeing me.”

The words have a weight to them, and Arkytior nods. Canton opens his mouth as though to say something else, then hesitates, shakes his head, and walks away.

River looks at them all.

“Five.”

~o*o~

They’re back at the diner, standing around the table they’d sat at earlier. River continues to expound on her earlier comment, at Rory’s urging.

“The Doctor numbered the envelopes. I got three, Canton got five.”

“Mine was two,” Arkytior adds. “You must’ve gotten four, then, Amy?”

Amy nods.

Arkytior looks at River. “Where’s one. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”

“He sent out messages.” River looks at Rory. “When you’re going to your death, who do you call?”

“Your friends.” Rory’s eyes slowly light up with understanding. “People you trust.”

“Who does the Doctor trust most in the universe?” River smiles.

Arkytior feels sick.

The door at the back opens at that moment, drawing all their eyes, and out steps the Doctor.

“This is cold,” River says, voice hard. “Even by your standards, this is cold.”

“You’re okay,” Amy breathes, staring at him in awe. “How can you be okay?”

“Or hello, as people used to say,” he mumbles. “Arkytior, so this is where you’ve been!”

He flashes her a smile, but she can’t quite return it, and when he reaches for her hand she pulls back. Not because she wants to--no, never that--but because the events of the day are still firmly in her mind and she can’t yet hide them away.

He’s hurt, she can see it. He looks at her for a long moment, staring into her eyes, before finally turning to greet the others. “Pond! Hello, Pond. Of course I’m okay! I’m the King of Okay!” He pulls Amy into a hug, then grimaces. “Oh, that’s a rubbish title. Forget the title. Rory the Roman, now that’s a good title.”

He leaves Amy to give Rory a quick hug, then nods at River. “Doctor Song. No dashing Captain with you?”

River shrugs, then without warning slaps his cheek with all the force she can muster. He reels back, raising a hand to his cheek. “Okay, I’m guessing that’s for something I haven’t done yet.”

“Yes.” River says no more.

“I don’t understand,” Rory says finally. “How can you be here?”

The Doctor holds up a dark blue envelope marked with a ‘1’. “I was invited. Space-time coordinates. Same as you lot, I assume, or else it’s a hell of a coincidence.”

His eyes travel to Arkytior’s again, questioning. She looks away.

“River, Dreamer,” Amy says, “what’s going on?”

Arkytior takes a deep breath and meets River’s eyes. She sees the knowing in them--something he hasn’t done yet. Of course. But why were they invited separately? River’s wondering that too, she can tell.

“Ask him his age,” River finally says.

“That’s a bit personal,” the Doctor answers, confused.

“Just tell her,” Arkytior says. “Tell her your age.”

“Nine hundred nine,” he says after a moment, shrugging.

“I don’t understand,” Amy whispers.

“Yeah, you do,” Rory tells her.

“I don’t!” The Doctor exclaims. “What are we all doing here?”

This time, River leaves the answer for Arkytior.

“We’ve been recruited,” she says slowly. “Space, 1969, and a man named Canton Everett Delaware the third.”

“Recruited.” He mouths the word thoughtfully. “Recruited by whom?”

“Someone who trusts you most in the universe.” She meets his eyes, silently begging him to trust her.

“Who is that?”

River takes a deep breath. “Spoilers.”


	2. The Impossible Astronaut--Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta-read by anarchitect

The Impossible Astronaut--Part Two

Inside the TARDIS, Arkytior gives the Doctor her most convincing smile and ushers their three companions down to the lower level. Silently, she pleads with the TARDIS-- _ don’t let him hear us, Old Girl. _

The TARDIS hums in response, and Arkytior takes a deep breath, looking at Amy.

“The Doctor on the beach was two hundred years older than our Doctor. A future version,” she says softly.

“But all that’s still going to happen. He’s going to die.” Amy stares at Arkytior desperately.

“We’re all going to do that, Amy.” River manages a sad smile.

“We’re not all going to arrange our own wake and invite ourselves,” Rory points out. “So the Doctor, in the future, knowing he’s going to die, invites all of us to what?”

“The better question is where were you?” Amy asks suddenly. “If that was a future Doctor, where was the future Dreamer?”

Arkytior flinches a little. “I-I don’t know. There’s a reason--there has to be some reason…” Her voice trails off. “But we can’t tell him anything we saw. Not ever. He crossed his own timeline--broke one of the cardinal Laws of Time, in a way.”

“Can you keep something this momentous from him?” River asks gently. “Rose, the bond.”

“Yes.” No hesitation, no questioning. “I can--I must. The only other option would be to wipe the memory from my mind, and Theta--he wanted me there for a reason.”

“There’s another choice.” River steps a little closer. “You could use the Chameleon Arch.”

A second of silence, then: “I don’t know the dangers of Chameleon Arch-ing myself again, River--I’ve never heard of it being done.”

“He must’ve wanted us there for a reason,” Rory says again. “Why? To avenge him?”

“Not his style,” River says immediately.

“To save him,” Amy tries.

Arkytior shakes her head. “We can’t, Amy. That was a fixed point, I told you. Time--Outer Time, history--is like--it’s a web, the Web of Time. Constantly shifting, in flux, but keeping the same basic structure. But there are some points, some events, that are like knots. If you undo the knots, the entire web unravels--the universe is destroyed. These knots are called fixed points. The Doctor’s death on the shore of Lake Silencio at 5:22 pm April 22, 2011, has always, will always, and must always occur. Fixed.”

The TARDIS hums warningly, and Arkytior sends Her a wave of gratitude. Seconds later, the Doctor’s head appears over the edge of the glass floor.

“I’m being extremely clever up here, and there’s no one to stand around looking impressed. What is the point in having you all?” he asks petulantly, before disappearing again. Rory and River head up the stairs to the upper level, but Amy grabs Arkytior’s arm before she can follow.

“What did you mean, Outer Time?” the redhead asks.

Arkytior sighs. “It’s complicated. I’ll explain later, when we’re not in the middle of something.”

As she climbs the stairs, she hears Amy murmur, “But we’re always in the middle of something.”

On the upper floor, the Doctor is twirling around the console, arms flapping, talking animatedly. “Time isn’t a straight line. It’s all bumpy-wumpy.”

“Big ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff,” Arkytior murmurs under her breath, grinning at the look the Doctor gives her.

“Anyway,” he continues. “There’s  _ loads _ of boring stuff like Sundays and Tuesdays and Thursday afternoons. But now and then there are Saturdays. Big temporal tipping points when anything’s possible.” His circle around the console takes him near to Arkytior, and he lowers his voice. “The TARDIS can’t resist them, like a moth to a flame.” He reaches out with one finger and taps her nose, lightly, causing her to giggle and a brief telepathic spark to arc between the two of them.

“Flirt,” Amy mumbles, and River laughs. The Doctor quickly moves away from Arkytior, casting Amy and River a wounded look, then bounds over to the scanner and grabs it in both hands.

“She loves a party, so I give her 1969 and NASA, because that’s space in the sixties, and Canton Everett Delaware the third, and this is where she’s pointing.”

Amy peers over his shoulder. “Washington, D.C., April 8, 1969. Why haven’t we landed?”

“Because that’s not where we’re going.”

Arkytior realizes what’s about to happen and falls silent, nervously running a finger across the edge of the console.

“Oh. Where are we going?” Rory asks.

“Home. Well, you two are.” The Doctor reaches out and presses a couple buttons. “Off you pop and make babies. And you, Doctor Song, back to prison. And Arkytior and I? We’re late for a biplane lesson in 1911. Or knitting, it could be knitting. Knitting or biplanes, one or the other.” He flops into one of the jump seats, crossing his legs. Seeing them all looking at him, he frowns. “What? A mysterious summons, and you think I’m just going to go? Who sent those messages? I know you know. I can see it in your faces. Don’t play games with us. Don’t ever, ever think you’re capable of that.”

Never once does his almost accusatory gaze fall on Arkytior, and she swallows.

“You’re going to have to trust us this time,” River says softly. 

The Doctor stands, steps close to her. “Trust you? Sure. But first of all, Doctor Song, just one thing. Who are you? You’re someone from my future. Getting that. But who?”

River stays silent, avoiding his eyes.

“Okay,” he mutters. “Why are you in prison, then? Who did you kill?”

Her jaw tightens, but she still doesn’t speak.

“I’m sorry, River.” He sighs, steps back. “But trust  _ you _ ? Really?”

“Trust me,” Amy says.

“Okay.” He walks over to stand in front of her.

“You have to do this, and you can’t ask why.”

“Are you being threatened? Is someone making you say that?” He ducks his head a little, stares into her eyes.

“No.”

“You’re lying.”

She shakes her head. “I’m not lying.”

“Swear to me,” he says, voice intense. “Swear to me on something that matters.”

Amy takes a deep breath. “Fish fingers and custard.”

“Our lives in your hands, Amelia Pond.” The Doctor turns away, back to the console, dancing around, flipping switches and throwing a lever. “So, Canton Everett Delaware the third. Who’s he?”

River lets out a long breath. “Ex-FBI agent. He was kicked out. A problem with authority, or something of the like. Six weeks after he left the Bureau, the President contacted him for a private meeting.”

The Doctor frowns, considering. “1969, who’s President?”

Arkytior laughs. “Richard Milhous Nixon, of course. Vietnam and Watergate.” She frowns.

“There’s some good stuff, too,” River protests.

“Not enough,” the Doctor grumbles, rolling his eyes.

“Hippie!” River teases.

“Archeologist!”

“Oh, hush,” Arkytior says.

“For once,” the Doctor says abruptly, “since I don’t know what I’m getting into this time, I’m being discreet. Putting the engines on silent.”

He pulls a lever as he twirls around the console, with the immediate result of a loud wail. The TARDIS humming with amusement in her head, Arkytior quickly flicked another switch, righting things.

“Did you do something?” The Doctor whirls around, fixing her with a sharp look.

Green eyes sparkling, she gives him her signature tongue-in-teeth smile, wide and warm and not-entirely innocent. “Of course not, just watching.”

“Oh, I see,” he says, stepping past her and pressing a kiss to her forehead on the way by. “Right, putting the outer shield on invisible. Haven’t done this in a while, big drain on the power.”

Rory’s eyes widen. “You can turn the TARDIS invisible?”

“Ha!” the Doctor crows, moving several small levers and spinning away.

“Very nearly,” River says, discreetly readjusting the levers. She catches Arkytior watching her, and there’s a brief second of eye contact before River winks and looks away.

“Now, I can’t check the scanner while we’re cloaked. It doesn’t work. Just give us a mo.” The Doctor moves towards the door, then spins and frowns when he sees everyone else following. “Whoa! Whoa, whoa, whoa. You lot, wait a moment. We’re in the middle of the most powerful city in the most powerful country on Earth. Let’s take it slow.” He turns back around and grabs the door handle.

“Am I part of ‘you lot’?” Arkytior asks.

His only answer is a grin and a wink tossed over his shoulder before he steps outside, closing the door behind him.

“Right then, let’s get the scanner working again, eh, Old Girl?” She runs her hand over the edge of the console, laughing at the TARDIS’s cheerfully amused hum.

“He said the scanner wouldn’t work,” Rory says, confused.

“He threw the manual into a supernova,” Arkytior responds, not mentioning the fact that it was only after the manual firmly explained there was no possible way to transcend the closed dimensional walls that he’d done so. She grins, reaches for a coral-coated cable the TARDIS conveniently drops down from the ceiling, and plugs it into the back of the scanner.

There’s a sudden jolt, the TARDIS shaking, and River laughs. “Every time.” Arkytior raises an eyebrow, but the blonde simply smiles and nods at the scanner. “Very discreet, isn’t he?”

On the scanner, the Doctor is being tackled by Secret Service agents and protesting rather loudly. “Arkytior,” he calls suddenly, catching her attention, “have you got the scanner working yet?”

River laughs and Arkytior rolls her eyes, muttering “How did you ever survive without me?” under her breath.

“Not well!” the Doctor shouts, then groans. “Arkytior, make Her blue again!”

(she’d forgotten how well he knows her)

With a sigh and a flip of a few switches, Arkytior does as asked and lowers the cloaking device. “Come on, we need to get out there.”

River runs to the door, throws it open, shouting out, “They’re Americans!” 

Rory follows suite, hands up, saying something about shooting--Arkytior catches a glimpse through the door of guns pointed at them, but Amy’s next to her and trying to get her attention. “So you actually read the manual, then?”

Arkytior laughs. “A long time ago and a newer model than this one. Mainly, I just listen to the Old Girl.”

“Don’t shoot!” comes from out the doors, and Amy giggles. “We better get out there before they get themselves thrown in prison,” she says, and steps out the door. Laughing, Arkytior follows.

“But who are they and what is that box?” President Nixon asks as Arkytior steps outside.

“It’s a police box, can’t you read? I’m your new--”

Arkytior cuts the Doctor off with a sigh. “Theta, you know that’s never going to hold up once the President orders follow-up investigation…”

He pouts.

“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t have you shot,” Nixon says threateningly.

“Only one?” She smiles her tongue-touched grin, pulls her new sonic from her pocket, finding the setting easily, and presses the button. “Well, I’ve just emitted a sonic frequency that you’ll find has disabled your guns--I’d say that’s a pretty compelling reason, wouldn’t you?”

“Arkytior,” the Doctor hisses, “what are you doing?”

“What did the recording say?” she counters. “I heard the very beginning of it when you left the TARDIS.”

“A little girl terrified of the spaceman and Jefferson Adams Hamilton.”

The Secret Service and the President both stand frozen as she walks through them towards the desk, sonicking the recorder. The recording plays again, and she listens carefully, then nods. “River, what do you think?” She meets River’s eyes, smiling when she sees River realize it’s a bit of a test.

“Who are you?” Nixon demands. “What is that--device? What are you doing here?”

“Never mind all that for the moment,” Arkytior says, shrugging it off. “River?”

“We’ll need five minutes and street maps covering all of Florida,” the curly-haired woman says after a moment of thought.

“Florida?” Amy asks, bewildered.

A man obviously recognizable as a much younger version of Canton steps forward, curiosity and admiration in equal amounts written across his face. “Why Florida?”

Arkytior laughs. “Florida. Home to NASA.”

Leaping to his feet, the Doctor steps around the desk, pulling her into a hug and grinning.  _ Brilliant, you are _ , he hums across the bond, then turns his grin on Canton. “Where the spacemen live.”

~o*o~

“Your five minutes are up,” Canton says a few minutes later.

“I asked for a fez,” the Doctor says in response.

“You don’t need a fez,” Arkytior mutters, continuing to scan the map in front of her. “Absolutely atrocious fashion sense.”

The phone rings before the Doctor can answer. 

“The kid?” Canton asks, and all eyes turn to Arkytior.

Nixon frowns. “Should I answer it?”

“Why is everyone looking at Arkytior?” the Doctor grumbles, then brightens immensely. “Ha! Here! The only place in the United States that call could be coming from. Obvious, when you think about it.”

Canton turns to look at the Time Lord, stepping over behind him to look at the map. “You, sir, are a genius.”

“It’s a hobby.”

“Mister President,” the man says, “answer the phone.”

Nixon does, warily. “Hello,” he says slowly. “This is President Nixon.”

The young girl’s voice comes over the line. “It’s here!” she cries. “The spaceman is here! It’s going to get me! It’s going to eat me!”

The pure, utter terror in the child’s voice tugs at some instinct Arkytior can’t identify, and she stares at the Doctor. “Theta, we have to help her,” she whispers.

He nods. “No time to explain. Mister President, tell her help’s on the way. Canton, on no account follow me into this box and close the door.”

River snaps her fingers and the TARDIS doors open, and she and both Ponds run inside. Arkytior follows, the Doctor directly behind, and she snaps her fingers to close the doors just as Canton ducks inside. Up by the console, River flips the dematerialization lever. Arkytior moves to stand by the Doctor, passing Rory on the way, who’s awkwardly standing near Canton, obviously waiting for the other man to ask questions.

“Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton,” the Doctor says, tapping on the scanner. “Jefferson isn’t a girl’s name, and it’s not her name either. Arkytior, River?”

“Surnames of three of America’s founding fathers,” River says.

The Doctor grins. “Lovely fellows. Two of them fancied me.”

Arkytior raises an eyebrow. “And when was this, Theta?”

He shrugs. “Oh, I don’t remember. Anyway, the President asked two questions: who are you and where are you? She was answering where.”

“Something about this doesn’t seem right,” she murmurs in response. “Why wouldn’t she give her name? And--how could she even get through to the President?”

River frowns. “I’d be willing to bet there’s alien tech involved in this somehow.”

“Good chance,” Arkytior agrees.

“We’re here!” the Doctor exclaims, running to the doors.

“Where?” Amy asks, following.

He grins. “Jefferson Adams Hamilton.”

~o*o~

With River and Rory exploring the strange tunnel River’d found in the warehouse, the Doctor off who-knows-where, and Canton distracted by the possibly-probably-alien tech, Arkytior pulls Amy over to examine the slimy non-terrestrial cables again.

“Dreamer,” Amy starts in a low voice.

Arkytior looks up, swallows. “No, Amy, we can’t.”

“You don’t know what I was going to say.”

“If we kill the spaceman now, here, in 1969, it won’t be at Lake Silencio in 2011 to kill the Doctor.”

“Okay,” Amy mutters, “lucky guess.”

“I’m thinking the same thing.” A breath. “But we can’t, Amy, we truly cannot. I meant what I said on the beach--it’s a fixed point. Time will unravel. If the spaceman dies now it creates a massive paradox, because we’re here because the spaceman was there.”

“But time can be rewritten.”

“Not all of it, not always.” Arkytior sighs. 

“We can still save him. Somehow.” Amy looks up, then, to see Canton coming back over, looking positively gleeful.

“Enjoying this?” Arkytior asks dryly.

Canton shakes off the question. “Doctor…  _ who _ , exactly?”

“That’s classified,” Amy says with a grin. 

“Classified by whom?”

“God knows.” Amy rolls her eyes.

“Help me! Help!” 

The voice is immediately recognizable as the little girl from the messages, and Canton whips around and takes off in that direction, as does Amy. The Doctor runs back in, from the opposite direction, grabs Arkytior’s hand.

“Come on, that’s her!”

Everything twines together, the bond opening, and she frantically hides the lakeside as the Doctor tugs her through the warehouse--Canton’s on the floor, unconscious, and the Doctor stops to look at him, pulling her down too.

And then the spaceman appears--

(spaceman--spacesuit, astronaut, an astronaut at the lake)

She’s babbling something, doesn’t know what, and suddenly Laws of Time be  _ damned _ , and she fumbles on the floor for Canton’s gun--

“Arkytior, stop it, what are you  _ doing _ ?”

She looks at him, eyes wild, everything blurring together--

“I--you--we--I think--” The gun comes up, shaky but there, she knows how to use it, the spaceman’s lifted its visor and there’s a little girl inside but Lake Silencio--

“Lake Silencio?”

“I think we’re going to die,” she whispers faintly, and pulls the trigger.


	3. Day of the Moon--Part One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta-read by anarchitect

Day of the Moon--Part One

_Three months later...._

They hold hands as they run.

There’s a dam up ahead, Glen Canyon Dam--according to the sign, anyway, somewhere in Arizona--and Amy glances over at Rory. A second of silent communication passes between the two of them, then Amy speaks.

“No new tally marks?”

Rory looks down at his arms. “None.”

“We safe to make a run for it?”

Ragged, scruffy, face and arms and face covered with tally marks, Rory looks both ways, then nods. “Three, two, one, _now_!”

Flying from cover, husband and wife sprint from cover, reaching midway across the dam before the first four-wheel-drive bursts out, cutting across their path. Another vehicle emerges behind them, trapping them against the edge of the dam.

“Canton,” Amy says as the man steps forward. “Do you even know why you’re doing this? Do you even remember the warehouse?”

Canton motions the men out of the jeeps. They carry a pair of--

“Are those body bags?”

“Yes, they are, Mrs. Pond.” He grins.

“They’re empty.”

“How about that?”

They still don’t shoot.

“What are you waiting for?” Rory asks.

Canton smirks. “For you to run. It’d look better if I shot you while you’re running.” He cocks his head, as though considering. “Then again, looks aren’t everything.”

His gun flashes twice.

~o*o~

River Song lifts the skirt of her evening dress and runs through the unfinished skyscraper, a hunted look in her wide eyes. She freezes, suddenly.

“I see you,” she shouts, fumbling with the Sharpie hanging around her neck, marking two more lines on a tally-covered arm. “I see you.”

“Doctor Song? Doctor Song? Go, go, go!” Canton’s voice floats through the skyscraper, and River whirls and runs again.

They catch her at an open wall.

“Don’t move! It’s over,” Canton says, aiming his gun at her.

“They’re here, Canton. They’re everywhere.” River backs up as far as she can.

“I know,” he answers. “America’s being invaded.”

She shakes her head. “You were invaded a long time ago. America is occupied.”

“You’re coming with us, Doctor Song. There’s no way out this time.”

River laughs. “One thing I’ve learned from the Doctor, Canton--always stand near a door.” She smirks. “There’s always a way out.”

With a wink and another laugh, she leans backwards and falls.

~o*o~

Arkytior knows it’s over.

She’s evaded them for a long time, searching for the Silence, marking them on her skin, and she’ll never be able to look at a tally mark the same way again--but it’s over, now. They’re coming. The salt water pools about her emerald Converse, soaking her feet, grains of sand washing in through the eyelets. She stands, stares out over the California ocean, the waves stained crimson and orange and gold and rose by the setting sun.

“It’s over, Dreamer.”

She turns, sunlight glowing behind her, turning her hair to molten flame. “You’ll have to shoot me a few more times than you’re expecting,” she says casually, looking from the gun aimed at her chest to the empty body bag beside Canton on the sand.

“As many rounds as it takes,” Canton returns. “If you try to run, my men will cut you off.”

“I’m not going to run.”

“So be it. Never can be sure, you know. Looks can be deceiving.”

The gunshot cracks through the air, and Arkytior smiles.

~o*o~

The Doctor sits, shackled and bound in a straightjacket, watching the walls of zero balance dwarf star alloy--the densest material in the universe--rise around him. The perfect prison. It’s nearly completed, now, with only the door remaining--Canton will be coming soon.

As though the thought’s a summons, the ex-FBI agent appears in the doorway right then, dragging body bags. Three of them.

“Is there a reason you’re doing this?” the Doctor asks, refusing to look at the body bags.

“I want you to know where you stand,” Canton answers, pulling the last body bag inside the door.

“In a cell.”

“In the _perfect_ cell,” Canton corrects. “Nothing can penetrate these walls. Not a sound, not a radio wave, not the tiniest particle of anything.” The soldiers standing guard outside leave, and Canton seals the door--and the facade cracks, a grin spreading across his face. “In here, you’re literally cut off from the rest of the universe. So, I guess they can’t hear us, right?”

The Doctor grins. “Good work, Canton. Door sealed?”

“You bet.”

Laughing, the Time Lord stands, the shackles snapping off and the straightjacket releasing easily. The body bags sit upright, unzipping. Rory climbs out first.

“You know, these things could really use some air holes.”

Canton chuckles. “I’ve never had a complaint before.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Arkytior mutters, kicking the bag off her salt-stained shoes. “Dead men tell no tales, after all.”

“Are you all okay?” the Doctor asks, leaning back against an invisible wall. With a snap of his fingers, the air shimmers and the TARDIS’s interior appears.

Amy frowns at Canton. “Isn’t it going to look odd that you’re staying in here with us?”

Canton shrugs. “Odd, but not alarming. They know there’s no way out of this place.”

“Whatever we’re doing, we aren’t going anywhere,” Arkytior agrees.

The Doctor slides around the corner he’s leaning against, stepping halfway inside the invisible TARDIS doors. “Shall we?”

As they file into the TARDIS, Canton asks, “What about Doctor Song? She dove off a rooftop.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” the Doctor says with a shrug, bouncing around the console. “She does that. Amy, Rory, open all doors to the swimming pool.”

Arkytior is the last to enter, closing the doors behind her and making her way to the console to help the Doctor. “I’d get out of the way,” she says to Canton as she passes. “The gravity’s about to get weird.”

The TARDIS materializes, the doors open, and River Song sails through in a perfect dive.

There’s a splash. The next second, the doors are closed and the TARDIS is back in the Vortex again, and a moment later River comes into the console room in dry clothes with her Vortex manipulator strapped around her wrist and the tally marks washed off.

“So,” the Doctor says after they’re all gathered around the console, “we know they’re everywhere. Not just a landing party, but an occupying force, and they’ve been here a very very long time. But nobody knows that, because nobody can remember them.”

“So what are they up to?” Canton asks.

“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Arkytior answers.

“The good news,” the Doctor adds, “is that we’ve got a secret weapon.” He grins brightly. “Neil Armstrong’s foot.”

~o*o~

“I can deal with Apollo 11,” Arkytior murmurs to the Doctor. “You go with Canton and Amy, I’ll take River and Rory. You know I’m better at blending in than you are.”

He starts to object, but she cuts him off. “Theta, I’m a _scientist_. Please?”

A second passes, then he sighs. “Fine then.” Louder, walking towards Rory: “So, three months! What have we learned?”

Rory opens his mouth to answer, but the Doctor grabs his hand and injects something into it. “Ouch!” He shakes his hand, frowning, then shrugs. “Well, they’re everywhere. Every state in America.”

Canton’s next, and he yelps. The Doctor ignores him, moves on to Amy, still talking. “Not just America. The entire _world_.”

“There’s a greater concentration here, though,” River says as he gives Amy the shot.

“Ouch,” Amy mutters.

“So you’ve seen them, but you don’t remember them?” Canton asks.

“You’ve seen them too,” Arkytior reminds him. “At the warehouse, remember?”

“While you pretended to hunt us down, we saw hundreds of them.” River sighs, shakes her head. “We still have no idea what they look like.”

“It’s like they edit themselves out of your memory, the second you look away,” Rory explains. “The _exact_ second you look away, you forget they exist.”

“So that’s why you marked your skin,” Canton realizes.

Amy nods. “It was the only way we’d know if we’d had an encounter.” She frowns. “Sometimes you feel a bit sick afterwards, but not always.”

“How long have they been here?” Canton asks.

“That’s what we’ve spent the last three months trying to find out.” Arkytior sighs. “It’s not easy when you can’t remember anything.”

“How long do you think?” Canton persists.

“As long as there’s been something in the corner of your eye,” the Doctor begins, voice low, “or creaking in your house, or breathing under your bed, or voices through a wall.” He meets everyone’s eyes, one at a time, hard and dark and intense. “And they’ve been running your lives for a very long time now, so keep this straight in your head. _We are not fighting an alien invasion_. We’re leading a revolution.” A breath, steel in his eyes and ice in his voice. “And today, the battle begins.”

“How?” Canton’s voice shivers with a tinge of fear.

“Like this,” and the Doctor grabs River’s hand first, injecting it, then Arkytior’s.

River hisses and shakes her hand, and Arkytior winces.

“Nanorecorder,” he says, laughing. “Fuses with the cartilage in your hand.” He pauses, injects his own palm. “Ow. It tunes itself directly to the speech centers in your brain. It’ll pick up your voice no matter what.”

Arkytior looks at her palm curiously. “Telepathic connection?” she guesses.

“Yep!” He beams. “The moment you see one of the creatures, you activate it, and describe aloud exactly what you’re seeing.”

 _“And describe aloud exactly what you’re seeing,”_ echoes around the console room.

“Because,” the Doctor continues, “the moment you break contact, you’ll forget the encounter ever happened. The light will flash if you’ve left yourself a message. You keep checking your hand. If you’ve had an encounter, that’s the first you’ll know about it.”

Canton shakes his head and sighs. “Why didn’t you tell me this before we started?”

“We did,” Arkytior says. “Even information about the creatures erases itself over time. None of us could talk to you, so we couldn’t keep it fresh in your mind.”

Canton looks away, a moment later turning and straightening the Doctor’s bow tie. He frowns when he sees everyone watching him. “What? What are you staring at?”

“Look at your hand,” Arkytior says, exchanging an amused glance with River.

In the center of Canton’s palm, a little red light is flashing. “Why is it doing that?” he asks, fascinated.

The Doctor sighs. “What does it mean if the light’s flashing? What did we just tell you?”

A frown. “I haven’t--”

“Play it,” River says.

_“My God, how did it get in here?”_

_“Keep eye contact with the creature, and when I say, turn back and straighten my bow tie.”_

_“What? What are you staring at?”_

_“Look at your hand.”_

An image stands in front of the TARDIS doors. “It’s a hologram,” the Doctor explains. “Extrapolated from a photo Amy took on her phone. Take a good, long look.”

Arkytior stares at it, commits it to memory--

She must’ve been staring at the door for a reason--hang on, Canton’s palm was flashing.

“You just saw an image of one of the creatures we’re fighting,” the Doctor says after a moment. “Describe it to me.”

Canton shakes his head. “I can’t.”

The Doctor shrugs. “Neither can I. None of us can. You straightened my bow tie because I planted the idea in your head while you were looking at the creature.”

“So they could do that to people,” Amy says slowly. “You could be doing stuff and not really knowing why you’re doing it.”

Rory’s eyes widen. “Like post-hypnotic suggestion.”

“Ruling the world with post-hypnotic suggestion?” Amy asks, skeptical.

“Now then, a little girl in a spacesuit,” the Doctor says. “They got the suit from NASA, but where did they get the girl?”

(helpmehelpmepleasehelpme and the gun kicks back and the sound of shattering glass and)

(and a high-pitched scream)

“Arkytior?” he asks softly, breaking into her memory.

“Sorry.” She looks around. “Find the little girl, right? Orphanages near the warehouse. I’m going to NASA--River, Rory, you’re with me. Kind of. Theta, a lift?”

~o*o~

This is definitely a Bad Idea.

The Doctor eyes the walls warily, taking note of the messages scrawled on them.

_Get Out Leave Now_

_Leave Me Alone_

_Get Out Now_

Very Not Good.

Canton is following Dr. Renfrew to the older man’s office, and the Doctor had been intending to go with them; the writing on the walls, however, makes him ever-more unsure about letting Amy explore by herself.

“Canton, I’m going to go with Amy. Yell if you need help.” He lifts his palm. “Don’t forget to check.”

Canton nods. “Be careful.”

The Doctor follows behind Amy, turns the opposite direction down the hallway. He ducks inside the first room, scans the dormitory, shrugs, goes to leave. When he lifts his hand to open the door the blinking red light in his palm catches his attention.

_“They’re everywhere. Sleeping. Get Amy, get Canton, get out before they wake up.”_

His arms are covered in tally marks.

He leaves the room quickly, quietly, runs down the hallway. There’s a door open partway down and he ducks in, sees Amy looking at a picture.

“Come along, Pond,” he says, voice low. “I’ve seen what I need to.”

“Doctor,” Amy says, turns, holds out the picture. “Look at this.”

A young girl with wide blue-green eyes, dark hair, and a shy smile stares at the camera.

“It’s the little girl,” the Doctor says, surprised. “From the suit.”

Amy nods. “But, Doctor, look at--”

She freezes, drops the picture, jumping at the sound of the glass shattering. Her eyes are focused over his shoulder, and he turns slowly, backing away from the door.

It’s the spaceman.

“Help me. Please, help me,” and the little girl lifts the visor and stares out at them with an anguished expression on her small face. The glass is cracked, lines spiderwebbing across the entire window, a round depression to show where the bullet hit--had the glass not withstood the impact, the bullet would’ve hit in the direct center of the girl’s forehead. An instant kill-shot.

“We’re sorry we shot at you,” the Doctor tries quietly. “There was a misunderstanding, she didn’t mean to shoot you.”

“What’s your name?” Amy asks.

The little girl hesitates, then whispers, “Aria.”

“That’s a lovely name,” the Doctor says with a smile. “Right, Aria, let’s get you out of that suit.”

Aria stares at him, as though trying to decide if she can trust him, and there’s something about her that’s… almost _familiar._ Her timeline spirals into the future, even more vague than it should be, vague enough to be almost invisible, familiar yet twisted--upside down, inside out--and then he feels movement in the hallway beyond and the moment shatters beyond repair.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Aria wails, and then two figures enter the room behind her.

In Renfrew’s office, Canton hears screams.


	4. Day of the Moon--Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Large chunk of this chapter written by anarchitect. Huge thanks to em; without em, this fic would not exist.

Day of the Moon--Part Two

Inside the Apollo 11 command module, Arkytior finishes her work inside the small panel and takes her sonic from between her teeth to seal the panel closed again. Several scientists run in, glaring, and she stares at them.

“Oh, hello,” she says with a cheery smile, discreetly tucking her sonic inside her jacket.

They glare even more fiercely. “Come with us. Now.”

A few minutes later, they’re inside what looks like a lecture hall, and two men wait for her, holding a pair of handcuffs. The one, whom she assumes to be the head of security, grabs her arms and roughly pins them behind her back--she’s stronger than they think she is, being a Time Lady, and she could break his hold but fighting won’t do anything--and secures the handcuffs around her wrist.

“Now,” he says, “I’m Gardner, Head of Security, and why don’t you tell me how the _hell_ you got into the command module?”

The clueless act the Doctor is so fond of isn’t going to work here--she’s not particularly fond of lying, but River and Rory should be coming with Nixon soon, and… “I’m on a mission for the President.”

“Why don’t you try again?” Gardner stares into her eyes. “Search her, Grant.”

The other man comes up with the sonic on his first attempt and stares at it, bewildered. “What the hell is this?”

“A sonic screwdriver, obviously,” Arkytior says with a sigh. “I’m on a mission, I promise you. I’m a scientist just like the ones who found me--or I was,” she adds under her breath, sagging slightly. “They forced me to be a soldier, but I’ve always been a scientist.”

Gardner frowns, looks from her to the sonic. “If you’d just get President Nixon to assure us of this mission, ma’am, that’d be swell.”

A smile snaps onto her face. “I’ve sent him a message.”

~o*o~

The TARDIS sits, uncloaked, on the carpet of the Oval Office. River and Rory wait within, while Nixon paces in front of his desk.

“You have to tape everything, Mister President,” Arkytior says. “It’s the only way you’ll know if they’ve been influencing you.”

“I need more than this,” Nixon says. “Dreamer, what were you doing to Apollo 11?”

She sighs. “I can’t tell you. Something clever. The Doctor and I came up with it. Listen--you can only trust the Doctor and myself, you know that, right? Trust no one else. They may be under the influence of the aliens. No more questions, please.”

She would say more, but then River runs out of the TARDIS with Amy’s mobile. “Rose, it’s Canton. Quick, he needs us.”

“What is it?” Arkytior asks, running inside the TARDIS and beginning the process of piloting Her to the orphanage.

“Amy and the Doctor went upstairs and he heard screaming. Neither have returned.” River flips a few levers, easily slipping into a seamless dance around the console, helping pilot. “He doesn’t know anything else.”

The TARDIS lands inside the foyer of the orphanage, where Canton waits for them. “Come on, hurry,” he says, leading them up the stairs to a closed doorway. Amy’s voice echoes from behind it.

“Help me,” she calls. “Please, I can’t see, help me.”

“We’re here, Amy,” Rory answers. “Are you okay?”

“I can’t see,” Amy repeats, and Canton frowns.

“Move,” Arkytior says simply, pulling out her sonic. She steps forward and sonics the door handle, finally getting it open. But before she ducks inside, she feels something--strange, familiar, pulling at her. Her eyes roam across the corridor and meet a pair of wide, terrified blue-green eyes. “I’ll be right in,” she tells Rory and River and Canton, and then she’s stepping over to the girl.

“Hello,” she says quietly. “What’s your name?”

“Aria,” the little girl answers.

“I’m Arkytior. Nice to meet you, Aria.”

Aria tries and fails to pronounce the name.

Arkytior smiles, tries not to laugh. “It means Rose,” she explains. “It’s another language.”

Aria’s eyes go round and wide. “Another language?”

“I’ll tell you a secret,” Arkytior whispers, bending down. “I’m not human. That’s why I have a funny name.”

“S’not funny, it’s pretty,” the little girl says firmly. She’s not shocked at the information that Arkytior’s other-than-human, which isn’t that surprising. Considering she’s been raised by aliens you forget every time you look away…

Then there’s a voice humming from the room behind her, chiming silver syllables, and Arkytior freezes. “I’m sorry, Aria--I have to go. But I promise we’ll find you, the Doctor and I, and we’ll keep you safe. I promise.”

Aria nods, and then Arkytior hears the voice again and it’s all she can do not to scream.

_“Arkytior, if you can hear me, this is a live feed.”_

She whirls and hurries into the room, looking past the ripped-open spacesuit to the two blinking red lights on the floor. “Nanorecorders,” she says, voice blank.

“They ripped it out of her,” Rory whispers, picking up the nanorecorder from which Amy’s voice emanates. “How did they do that? Why can I still hear her?”

“Is it a recording?” River asks.

“Dreamer!” Rory snaps, voice laced with bitter anger.

“Everyone _shut up_ for five seconds, would you?” Arkytior shouts suddenly, holding the nanorecorder to her ear. The soft chiming voice ripples from the recorder, words that no one else can understand.

_“Arkytior, it’s a live feed. They kidnapped Amy and I--we’re both safe, don’t worry about us right now. This is one way, so I can’t hear you, but I know you’re listening. I know you’re there. Don’t lose yourself, Arkytior. The little girl’s name is Aria. Save her if you can. And stop them. Tell Rory Amy’s safe, and--Arkytior, I love you.”_

His voice cuts off, there, and her throat closes. Gasping, choking, she tries to breathe, stares at the flickering red light--he’ll be okay, he’s safe, both of them are--

(rule number one: the doctor lies)

(but not to her never to her he wouldn’t)

“Hello?” a quavering voice says from the hallway. “Is somebody there? I think someone has been shot. I think we should help. We c--I can’t re--I can’t remember.”

“His office,” Canton says.

They follow Renfrew and Canton down the hall, the stairs, back into the office--

There’s one of _them_ on the floor. Shot. Arkytior stares at it. A sudden surge of icy-cold anger roars through her, and she stiffens.

“Who and what are you?” Her voice is dagger-sharp steel.

And it speaks.

“Silence, Dreamer. We are the Silence.” It hisses and draws out the words, almost mockingly. Arkytior pales.

_“Silence, Doctor, Dreamer. Silence will fall.”_

_“We ran from the Silence.”_

_“The Silence?”_

“And Silence will fall.”

~o*o~

Canton and President Nixon have been dropped off at Area 51, and the TARDIS landed back in the warehouse. River and Rory drag the spacesuit over to the alien tech they’d found the last time they were here, Arkytior following behind.

Every movement she makes is just-slightly _wrong_ , smooth and fluid and regal but utterly inhuman. With steel in her bones and ice in her veins and her shattered-glass smile, her cold and empty gaze always watching, always calculating, she follows behind her two companions with a soft-silent step.

She has not smiled since the orphanage, and she’s pinned the still-silent nanorecorder to her coat.

Neither Rory nor River dares mention it.

“It’s an exoskeleton,” River says after a moment of examining the spacesuit. “Basically, life support. There’s about twenty different types of alien tech in here.”

“Aria,” Arkytior says thoughtfully. “Who is she? Why would they put her in here?”

“You put this on, you don’t even need to eat. It processes sunlight directly. Also, built in weaponry and a communications system that can hack anything. Defaults to the highest authority it can find.”

“Aria gets frightened, and the suit calls the President.” Arkytior paces, long leather coat swirling in her wake. “Why are the Silence raising a little girl? Why her?”

River hesitates. “I’d say she’s human. Judging by the suit.”

“But?” Arkytior frowns. “The only way to get them back is to discover what the Silence are doing. What they want.”

“I know,” Rory says, sighing heavily. “I know.”

“She climbed out of this suit,” River says after a moment. “Forced her way out. She must be incredibly strong.”

“Incredibly strong and running away.” Arkytior sighs. “I like her. We should try and find her.”

“Amy and the Doctor first,” River says firmly.

“Agreed. Why does it look like a NASA spacesuit?” Rory asks.

“Because,” Arkytior says, staring into Rory’s eyes, “that’s what the Silence _do_. Think about it, Rory the Roman.”

(the title tumbles out of her mouth before she can think about it)

(it’s like a knife in her heart, twisting, twisting)

(she rushes on)

(maybe if she rushes fast enough they won’t notice)

“They don’t make anything themselves. Why would they? They can make other races do it for them.”

“So they’re parasites, then,” River says.

“Superparasites,” and there’s a word Theta would like, and enough thinking about him. “Hidden in the shadows of humanity since the very beginning. We’ve discovered they can influence human behavior however they like, and if they’ve been doing that on a global scale since the beginning…”

Rory tenses a little. “Then what?”

“Then _why_ did the human race suddenly decide to go to the Moon?”

Silence.

Arkytior turns back again, pins them both with her cold-sharp gaze. “Because the Silence needed a spacesuit.”

The silence is broken by River’s sharp intake of breath. She pulls out her tricorder.

“You should kill us all on sight,” the Silence on the screen says, and Arkytior smiles.

It’s a smile of broken glass and steely knives, sharp and slashing and cutting deep into her face, so deep there should be crimson-hot blood trickling down her cheeks.

Then the spacesuit’s glove twitches.

“It’s like it’s repairing itself,” River says slowly. “Rose, do you think a unit like this would ever be able to move without an occupant?”

“Maybe. Why?”

“Because the little girl said the spaceman was coming to eat her. Maybe that’s exactly what happened.”

Amy’s voice echoes from her nanorecorder again and Rory’s face tightens. “Can’t you save her?” he asks finally.

Arkytior nods. “I can track the signal back. It’d take us directly to them.”

“Then why haven’t you?”

“Because what happens then, Rory?” Arkytior takes a deep breath. “What do I do? This isn’t an alien _invasion_. The Silence live here. Earth is their empire. This is kicking the Romans out of Rome.”

Rory stares at her. “Rome fell.”

“I know.” A ragged breath. “I think I was there, at some point.”

“So was I.”

“Do you remember it?” she asks, softly. “Two thousand years, waiting for Jack and River to find you?”

“No.” Too quick.

“You’re lying.”

“Of course I’m lying,” Rory says with a harsh, bitter laugh.

“Of course you are.” She’s quiet a moment. “Not the sort of thing one forgets, I’d assume.”

“It’s like a door in my head. I can keep it shut. Neither Amy nor I remember it all the time,” he explains.

Arkytior nods. “Right. River, Rory, come on. TARDIS. It’s time.”

~o*o~

The Doctor wakes up.

That is, in itself, a bad sign. Time Lords don't need much sleep, and he doesn't think he's _really_ slept for - oh, centuries, probably, since the War. Grabbing catnaps when he can, dozing half-upright by the console - the light half-dormancy that is all a Gallifreyan really needs - never deep enough to dream, because dreams are - well.

There's a moment of something like static.

It buzzes through his head like blood and glass, drowning out rational thought - interference, or an echo of something that never happened, the whine of white noise - a bad connection distorting words to meaningless noises except in his head.

He winces automatically, slams his shields down. The crash doesn't do much against the bad-connections static but it does wake him up a little; the world sliding into focus.

Dark - and light - and he recognizes the room just enough to know that nothing's changed. Still locked up then. Still in the Silence base. Still waiting.

(He doesn't really _mind -_ he still has Arkytior, and besides, what's the worst the Silence could do? He's the Doctor, after all.)

Which is when something occurs to him.

He twists in the restraints, can't reach it, swears distractedly in Gallifreyan. Closes his eyes instead, and thinks hard. Somewhere in his head, the nanoreceiver should still be active, sending out that familiar constant signal - a signal a Time Lord can sense, if he tries hard enough. Should be.

But it's not.

Only to be expected. The Silence tore it out of his hand for a reason, after all. Maybe they sent out an EMP, that would explain the staticky headache. He sighs, and drags himself slightly more upright in the restraints, various chains clinking -

"Doctor?"

"Amy!" he says automatically. Tries to turn, and bangs his head on the wall, and swears again, sending a frantic [don't-translate-that] in the vague direction of the TARDIS. "Yes. Right. Sorry. Are you alright?"

_Silence._

The Doctor jumps, and bangs his head again, and manages not to swear this time. " _Ow._ That really isn't helping the headache, you know."

 _Silence,_ the thing hisses, moving through the vague foggy darkness with that same slithering half-dance gait.

The Doctor squints. "Yes, I know, you take that very seriously, don't you."

This time it just hisses, still advancing. "Has anyone ever told you you're very ugly?" Amy manages, voice shaking only a little. "Because you are, you know."

 _We do you an honor. You will bring about the Silence,_ it rasps. _Silence will fall._

"So you keep saying," the Doctor notes. And frowns. "The Silence of what, exactly? Where?"

 _It is not necessary for you to know._ It's hard to tell, but it seems like the Silence-thing is smiling. _You will know soon._

"Well, I really don't think I'm going to be staying here much longer," the Doctor decides, "so maybe you could tell us?"

_You have been here many days._

His eyes narrow. "No I haven't."

_Your memory is weak. You have been here many days._

(The buzz of static in his head, memories that aren't _his_ memories, but - no.) His face hardens. "No, I haven't. I'm a Time Lord. I can _tell._ "

_Can you tell your fate?_

"What?" He blinks, taken aback.

_Can you see the Silence?_

It's coming closer; the Doctor wishes vaguely that he had his sonic. "Er. Isn't it a bit of an oxymoron to _see_ silence - "

_Silence will fall, Doctor._

And it's gone.

The static headache slowly fades, and he finds himself able to feel the nanorecorder again. Who knows how long he's got until the Silence detonate another EMP-he has to hurry.

"Arkytior," he murmurs, switching to Gallifreyan. "If you can hear me, this is a live feed."

Amy frowns. "Doctor, what are you doing?"

He pauses. Switches to English. "They can hear you now, if you talk to them." And back to Gallifreyan. "Arkytior, it's a live feed. They kidnapped Amy and I-we're both safe, don't worry about us right now. This is one way, so I can't hear you, but I know you're listening. I know you're there. Don't lose yourself, Arkytior. The little girl's name is Aria. Save her if you can. And stop them. Tell Rory Amy's safe, and-Arkytior, I love you."

Then the Silence come back, dragging him forward-

He loses the concentration to speak, but he's said what's necessary. She'll come.

The Silence undo his chains, manhandle-Silencehandle?-him into a chair, secure him again. All through the process, they don't speak, which _is_ rather unnerving if he stops to think about it too much. He does his best not to think at all.

The Silence repeat the same process with Amy, only she fights them, struggles and swears at them and generally makes it impossible to restrain her. So they generate an electric charge, filling the air with a blue-crackle hum-

Which is when the TARDIS arrives.

The Doctor whoops cheerfully from the back of the room; Amy makes an indistinct relieved noise as the rasping pulsing wheeze echoes around the room - _vworp, vworp, vworp._

And Arkytior steps out. Holding a sixties television by a handle, not smiling, her eyes like ice.

"River, Rory, keep one of the Silence in eyeshot at all times," she announces, and sweeps forward.

(There's something regal in her posture - or maybe it's _commanding,_ something fitting of Rassilon's only descendant. Arkytior walks straight and tall, an Empress of Time, and her head held high.)

She drops the television on the central console of the vaguely TARDIS-like room with a clang. "I've seen one of these before. It was abandoned. I do wonder how that happened."

The Silence move fast - advancing to attack, electricity sparking in the air - but she's already spun, hands out, imperious. " _No."_

They stop.

"No," she continues, careful, eyes hard. Holding the entire room in place with sheer force of will. "You're the Silence, so bloody well _be_ silent. _Listen._ " She turns once, the circle of Silence around her frozen, River just behind her, Rory already working on Amy's chains with a sonic screwdriver. "Listen to _me."_

She says the words slowly, with a rolling icy kind of power. "I'm the Dreamer. I'm the last Time Lady living. I'm Rassilon's daughter, I'm Arkytior who was once Rose who was once Bad Wolf, human and less than human and free chronoform. I fought in the Time War, the Last Great Time War, the War in Heaven, and I survived. You _will_ listen to me. Is that understood?"

The Silence hang back, and don't speak; Arkytior smiles an icy alien smile. "Good."

She turns easily, leaning back against the console. "Now, I'm not going to lie to you. I'm not the Doctor, I'm afraid. River has her own gun and Rory survived the end of the universe twice including the two thousand years in between, but that doesn't even really matter." She sighs, half-dramatically. "Oh, I _could_ say I'd prefer to let you go, but like I said. I'm not the Doctor. You're not getting out of this intact." The smile is still there. "You can trust me on that."

"What is she - " Amy hisses to Rory from the back of the room.

"I don't know," he answers hurriedly. "Something. I hope."

(The Doctor hasn't moved. Staring after Arkytior with an almost puzzled expression on his face, like he's only now realizing something.)

"So how about this," the Dreamer suggests airily. "You tell me what this is. What Silence? Whose Silence? And you tell me about Aria." She doesn't advance, staying on her pedastal, but she focuses; staring the lead monster in the eye. "Who is she? Why is she important? What's she for?"

The Silence only hiss.

And behind them the television's turned itself on, showing a grainy black-and-white picture - the speakers buzz out _and we're getting a picture on the tv -_

"I'm so sorry," the Dreamer sings, almost kindly, "but you're way out of _Time._ "

And then she spins again, tapping the telly with one easy finger. "Well, I'm assuming you know what this is. Considering the damage you've done to this place's timelines, you're obviously _some_ kind of time-active, so you must know how important it is too. I'll give you the numbers, just in case - because this man, this moment, this video, someday humanity will spread and expand and grow, billions upon billions of them, and every single one of them." She cocks her head. "At some point in their lives. Will look back at this man, taking that very first step, and they will _never._ Ever. _Forget_ it."

_okay, engine stop, ATA on the descent - modes control both auto. descent module -_

"Do you know what kind of power that has?" Arkytior asks, flipping long hair out of her eyes. "Do you know how quickly an idea could spread, if embedded into _this_ transmission?" There's something almost scornful there. "You never studied the War, did you, or you'd have _known,_ the danger of infectious concepts. You never studied anything. You're amateurs," she declares, scathing and icy and not to be questioned. "Little meddlers, children in a sandbox, and _we_ are Time Lords. Now _listen._ "

Phone up to her ear - eyebrows up, faux-bored with it all - "Ready?"

"Ready," says Canton Everett Delaware the Third.

She grins at them, at all of them, only barely registers the off-kilter tingle of the Doctor's mind through their bond. Waits for it - waiting as the information climbs the ladder into the stars, blooming, taking over -

Everything goes quiet at once.

_That's one small step for man -_

_YOU SHOULD KILL US ALL. ON SIGHT._

She watches the reactions, absorbing the way they suddenly shrink back, watching them _understand. YOU SHOULD KILL US ALL. ON SIGHT._ And even with her eyes pinned to their leader - not letting the erasure get to her - she can feel it, feel the order sinking into even her Time Lord mind. _YOU SHOULD KILL US ALL. ON SIGHT._

"You gave the order for your own execution," she whispers, delighted. "And the whole planet just heard it."

 _YOU SHOULD KILL US ALL, ON SIGHT,_ the television roars, and then it cuts out - _one giant leap for mankind._

She lets it sink in, hands folded primly behind her back, still smiling. "You just raised an army against yourselves." Her voice sweet and polite and dangerous "And for a billion billion years, until the last copy of a copy of a copy of this recording is destroyed, you're going to be ordering them to destroy you. Every day. Oh, you can override the order, but only one person at a time, and you're going to have a hard job of it getting a phrase that long out before they jump at you. You can kill them, of course, but there's so many humans around; they'll get you eventually." She shrugs. "How fast can you run? How many of you are there? Not many, I shouldn't think. You'll run out of forces long before they do. They'll wipe you off the face of their planet," she says delightedly, "and they won't even know they're doing it."

There's a pause; the Silence shift uneasily, the crackle of electricity growing in the air, but still held back. Maybe it's fear. Maybe not. The Dreamer, who is Arkytior and was Rose and held the Bad Wolf, sighs carefully, the pulse of the room under her fingertips, everyone waiting for the signal. "And _that_ is how you meddles with time, darlings. Show's over." And her head snaps up, lunging forward toward the TARDIS, the now-freed Amy and Rory moving at the same instant, the Doctor kicking it all into gear -

" _Run!"_

And then they're moving and River's hitting shot after perfect shot and Arkytior blows the television up with her sonic which seems to shock everyone long enough to get into the TARDIS, and things happen fast.

The TARDIS doors slam shut, and they're all inside - breathing hard - and she takes a gasping breath and throws her arms around the Doctor's neck and kisses him hard, the bond flaring between them, and doesn't let go for a long time.

~o*o~

In a filthy, narrow alley deep in the heart of New York City, a young girl shivers and coughs, pulling a threadbare green blanket tighter about her shoulders. She’s been sick for a long time, now, months. It’s gotten too bad to fight.

A fire burns deep within her, and she cannot keep it back any longer.

“Hey, little girl, you okay?” a nearby tramp asks, looking up from his scavenging.

“It’s alright. It’s quite alright,” she says softly. “I’m dying--but I can fix that. Really, it’s easy. See?”

She holds out a hand, glowing with golden flame, and the man’s eyes widen. He stammers, backs away, turns and runs. Frowning, confused, all alone and so very cold, Aria fades back into the shadows and lets the fire swallow her whole.


	5. The City That Never Was--Part One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original plot.  
> 

The City That Never Was-Part One

Amy and Rory stand on the doorstep of the old Pond house (now with just the right number of rooms) and wave cheerfully as the TARDIS dematerializes - Arkytior watching them on the scanner as long as she can, through the mist of gold.

River's off to Stormcage again; the Silence are apparently gone, if not for good then for a while at least, and the Doctor's dancing around the TARDIS console in his usual ragtag manner. She tries to focus on that, but she can't help but think of Aria - a little girl in a spacesuit, shot and left for dead in a warehouse far away from home. A little girl with a timeline so distinctly, so sickeningly, so _familiarly_ broken.

And the spacesuit brings her back to Lake Silencio, watching the golden fire of regeneration die in the air. Theta's hands in hers, but nothing behind them, no blue-and-silver sparking, no bond -

She pushes it away hard, before it can leak over to _this_ Doctor, forcing it back into memory. Not now.

"Where are we going, Theta?" she asks finally, turning, a grin like a mask on her face. "Anywhere in particular?"

The Doctor smirks mischievously, reaching out and catching her hand, projecting [surprise] and [wait-and-see] through the skin-on-skin contact. "Anywhere and everywhere," he proclaims with a wink, pulling her close and sweeping her away in a spontaneous, music-less dance around the console.

She laughs, spinning away and grabbing the edges of the scanner, where he's entered the coordinates for their next destination already. It's Circular Gallifreyan, arcing slowly across the screen; she recognizes the string of numbers and symbols immediately.

"Woman Wept?" she asks, a slow smile spreading across her face. "We haven't been there since I came back."

"Exactly," he answers, grinning brightly, flipping a few levers. "Shall we?"

With a tongue-in-teeth grin, Arkytior slams the last button, and the TARDIS grinds to a shuddering landing. "Yes, let's," she says, heading for the door, preparing herself for the blast of arctic air - Woman Wept is _cold,_ even to Time Lord senses. Last time she was here, she was human still, and she had to wear a semi-intelligent thermal suit - she was human, she realizes, with a burst of something like nostalgia. She didn't know who the Doctor really was. She didn't know who she really was. It wasn't even that long ago.

And then the door opens, and she squints -

And nothing.

She steps outside into a industrial-looking building, a tangle of wires and tubes, with the TARDIS parked on a dark square that looks suspiciously like a loading bay of some kind. She blinks once, a little surprised, and rolls her eyes. "You call this Woman Wept?"

The Doctor emerges, blinking in the light, and looks a little sheepish. "Well…"

"Next time, I'll drive-we might actually end up where we _intended_ to," she announces with an exaggerated sigh, and strolls forward toward the control-panel-encrusted walls. She can feel the Doctor rush to follow her, indignant.

"It's not that bad!"

Arkytior turns, half-laughing - and sees a light just above the TARDIS blink on. An automated buzz rattles into life:

" _Hazardous waste detected. Automated disposal initiating in three… two… one…"_

Which is when the dark square below the TARDIS cleanly disappears, and drops Her down into darkness.

Arkytior stands for a moment, torn between fear and amusement. The amusement finally wins, and she laughs, looking at the Doctor sidelong. "Again?"

He frowns. "What do you mean, again? I don't make a _habit_ of losing the TARDIS."

She raises an eyebrow.

"Okay, I'll admit it does tend to… happen," he finally says, sheepishly. "She can't be _that_ far down, we'll find her eventually…."

"Outside, then?"

He nods.

They slip through a door labeled _emergency exit_ \- the Doctor disables the alarm first - and come out in an alien city, warm, bright - towering buildings and elegant spires, a mix of modern and ancient and distinctly alien. It's undeniably beautiful, but - Arkytior's brow furrows, trying to pinpoint it - there's a sense of _decay_ about it all, an almost-abandonment, a dying society. Or is that ridiculous? She can't quite tell - and there's something funny about it to her time-senses too.

Except she doesn't have time to analyze it; because she's looked up at the sky, and that's when something starts to make sense. "Theta…"

He follows her gaze upwards. "Is that...?"

"Ice," she says wonderingly. "The sky is made of ice."

And it is: a glittering pale-white expanse above them, dissolving into blue at the edges, sweeping down toward the horizon until it touches the ground a deep navy-blue. The Doctor snaps his fingers. "Woman Wept, it _is_ Woman Wept! Think of _that_ the next time you criticize my driving," he declares delightedly.

Arkytior shakes her head - there's something wrong, but she can't put her finger on it. The emptiness of it all. "Considering that you were aiming for _above_ the ice sheets, I don't know if it really helps your case…" she drawls.

He makes an indistinct annoyed noise and settles for poking her instead, [shhh] and [stopit] tempered by a gentle kind of [amusement] filtering in through the bond. A huff, and he sets off, walking toward the blue of the horizon through more empty industrial buildings. She follows him, still grinning.

And then - barely five minutes in, the city towers receding behind them - they hit a wall.

Smooth, and transparent, and glowing ever so slightly; stretching up ridiculous distances to the ice above.

Suddenly, the deep-black-blue walls make sense; it's a wall made of _glass,_ with an impossibly endless amount of ocean behind it. The Doctor bounds forward to stick his face against the meters-thick glass, spellbound; Arkytior follows slower, grinning. "An arctic ocean." he breathes. "Supercooled water kept liquid by the pressure of the ice above it. Oh, this is good, this is very clever, I love it."

Arkytior frowns, staring out into the dark. "Hang on. But if this is Woman Wept - "

"Yes!" says the Doctor excitedly, and spins. "A city stuck to the underside of the ice! Imagine, the ice must be thousands of feet deep, and still here - which must mean - "

And that's when it occurs to him, too.

"Which means they survived the sun going out," Arkytior finishes.

"But the sun was - " He spins again, staring at the icy sky above, the city. "The sun never _existed._ It was eaten by an n-form at the beginning of the War, erased from existence - there never _was_ life here, there can't have been." He repeats it, almost confused, something like denial there. "There can't."

"Remnants of a timeline that never happened," Arkytior whispers. "Orphans of a history that could never have produced them. Somehow still surviving."

The Doctor frowns, preoccupied; she can feel him pushing away any thought of the War through the bond. "Hang on, how? There's no place for them to get energy from. And why are the timelines around here so _quiet_?"

Arkytior sighs, looks around, spots something that looks very like a cafe just across the street. The sign on the wall labels it OCEAN VIEW. "When in doubt, ask around," she murmurs, nodding at the building. "Fancy a cuppa-or whatever passes for tea here?"

The Doctor shrugs. "The domestic approach?"

"But of course," and she grins at him sidelong, trying to drive the War out of his eyes, and grabs his hand, tugging him along. "And anyway, if we can learn a bit about this city, maybe we can find the TARDIS."

She doesn't mention how empty the city feels, the fact that she's not sure there's anybody _in_ that coffee shop. She doesn't mention the shiver the shadow-smoke timelines send down her spine either, but he feels it anyway, with the skin-on-skin contact strengthening their bond, and he sends a wave of [calm] and [comfort] to her, squeezing her hand gently. "Right, of course, cuppa it is."

They stroll forward hand in hand, across the path - street is really the wrong word, with no sign of any kind of vehicle - and push open the door, carefully. Time Lord eyes adjust to the relative dusk almost instantly; she picks out empty chairs and tables lying off-kilter and disorganized around the room, and for a moment she almost recoils; expects to see bodies on the floor and blood on the walls, but no. It's clean - dusty, empty, but there's no sign of a fight. It's more like nobody cared enough to try and fix it.

"Go away."

Her head snaps up to focus on the figure behind the bar; a morose-looking humanoid glaring at them dully. His voice is sharp and cold and almost impossible exhausted. "Get out. Now."

The Doctor hesitates. "We were just looking for a cup of tea."

"Well, you can find it somewhere else," he snaps. "We all agreed, peace and quiet for three days, all I want is to be alone for three days."

"Three days?" the Doctor asks, immediately curious. "Why three days? What's happening in three days?"

The man very nearly snarls, somewhere between exasperated and furious. "Don't be freezing ridiculous, in _three days,_ you can't honestly claim you don't know what's happening."

"We're from out of town," he tries, offering the man a bit of a grin. "Not quite sure where we are, actually, other than somewhere on Woman Wept-"

"Cthylla's teeth," the humanoid announces. "Why do _I_ have to get stuck with the freezin' idiots? You're either lying, insane, or both. No one comes from 'out of town'," he bites out, making exaggerated air quotes with both fingers. "There _is_ no out of town."

Arkytior grimaces. "Well, uh…" She struggles to think up a cover story but comes up with nothing, finally just shrugging. "We're space-time travellers who came here in our space-and-timeship? We were aiming for the surface, but our ship-the TARDIS-landed us down here instead. So, I'm sorry, but we're neither lying nor insane. Just… confused."

He sighs, scrubs a hand down his face. "You can't honestly expect me to believe that. _Please,_ I just want _quiet._ For three days. Three freezing days."

"We're serious, really," the Doctor says. Holds out his TARDIS key helpfully. "See? The key to our ship."

"Just get out," the man says, toneless.

Arkytior considers, cooly. "How many hearts does your species have?"

He stops, taken aback, gives her a confused look. "...One. What kind of question is that supposed to be?"

She extends her wrist. "Take my pulse."

He stares, hesitates, then shrugs and lays his fingers on her wrist, holding them there for a second before yanking back. "What the-oh, War in Heaven," he says, eyes wide.

The Doctor flinches, hand brushing against Arkytior's, and [fear-pain-guilt] mixes with [fire-blood-screams] until he regains some semblance of control.

"Er, name's Ywerin," the man stammers. "Oh, Cthylla, do you want me to, I don't know, take you to my leader or something?"

"Actually," the Doctor starts. Arkytior silences him with a sharp look.

"An explanation of _three days_ would be just fine," Arkytior says smoothly.

Ywerin nods, visibly flustered. "Er, well, in three days the City's going to run out of power and we're all going to die?"

It's not really supposed to be a question, but he asks it like one anyway.

"How do you even _have_ power?" the Doctor asks suddenly. "You don't have a sun, you shouldn't exist-"

"Rude," Arkytior chastises halfheartedly. She's too preoccupied with the look on Ywerin's face to really pay attention.

"I don't know," Ywerin tries, white-faced. "I can. Take you to the people who would?" And then hope blooms on his face, so raw and fragile it's almost painful. "If you're really travellers - aliens - can you help us? Can you fix the splinter engines?" He takes a hurried breath, and stops, frozen, waiting.

The Doctor considers the question for an agonizing moment. "We can try."

Ywerin looks torn -

"We _will,_ " Arkytior adds firmly. "We should be able to fix anything in three days, and if necessary we can always get a power boost from our ship." (Which is currently down a garbage chute somewhere, but that's not directly relevant.)

"Oh, thank the Ice," says Ywerin fervently, and then louder - " _Oh -_ "

He cuts himself off, dashing around the counter, grabbing something that could be a communication device along the way. "It's - I can show you - in the City Center - "

The Doctor grins. "Right then! Take us to your electrician." And frowns, considering. "No - doesn't have quite the same ring to it - "

Which is when Arkytior grabs his arm and drags him out of the door.

~o*o~

The Council Room is small, most of the richly carpeted floorspace taken up by the heavy wooden table-where they even got the wood from, Arkytior isn't sure, but the entire city seems to contradict the very Laws of Time and so she decides that a table made out of seemingly unattainable building materials isn't really a very high priority. The ceiling is high, though, and ice-white, and she supposes it feels rather like a Council Room.

There are a handful of men and women gathered around the table-the men in ocean-blue robes, the women in white-like dress uniforms, almost. One woman-tall, imperious, with blonde hair coiled on her head and pale eyes embedded in skin the exact color of the blue-tinged-black ocean outside - advances, apparently the leader of the bunch. She regards them for a moment, imperiosly; Arkytior holds her chin high and shoots back her best Time Lady stare. (She is Rassilon's daughter, heir to the Presidency, child of the Matrix, and she is not intimidated by anyone or anything.)

The Doctor, meanwhile, is bouncing on his toes, impatient to get to the interesting bits. "Hello," he blurts eventually, and grins a disarmingly friendly grin; Arkytior can't help a smirk.

"I am Deia," the dark-skinned woman says after a moment. "Who are you, to pull us back here, away from our families, at this last moment of our civiIization?"

The Doctor coughs. "I'm the Doctor, and this is my bond-mate, the Dreamer. We landed here by accident, we really don't mean to intrude."

The woman takes a careful delicate breath. "I am told you are - not citizens. Is this correct?"

"Yes, it is," Ywerin supplies, anxiously "They're not - I felt her pulse, she's not human, they say they can _help -_ "

There's a moment of silence, while the Council members react to that information. Arkytior watches them carefully - watches the hope and the suspicion and the many varieties of sheer shock bloom in their faces. This problem with their - splinter engine? - it's been hanging over them for a long, long time.

"Your power source," the Doctor persists after a moment. "It's failing?"

Deia holds her head high, something akin to fear in her white eyes. "It shouldn't be possible, but the Splinter Engines" - this time the capitals are audible - "are slowing down. As if there's no more power to feed on. We rely on the Engines to recycle our air, to give us light to grow our food, to keep us warm - if they go dead, the City will follow in their wake in no time at all." She swallows. "Even the City itself - the pressure around us is intense enough that only the Engines keep the walls intact at all. When they fail, we crack like eggshells."

The Doctor doesn't say anything at all.

It's Arkytior who steps forward, matching the other woman inch for inch. "Show us," she says; it's not quite an order, but it's close. "I'm a scientist, and he's… good with machines. We can help you.

Deia hesitates, and then nods; there's respect in her eyes. "Follow me."

Arkytior pulls the Doctor forward, Ywerin and the Counicil coming close behind. They walk down beautifully painted corridors - the walls showings scenes of ocean life, with sunlight filtering down through blue water, images the citizens of the City have somehow retained from a long-gone timeline. She can feel the impossibility of it now that she's looking for it, that buzz in her bones - but still that _quiet._ That feeling of everything dying. As if someone's sucked all the power out of the paradox, left it a paper-thin shell on the cosmic beach.

Deia leads them to a door, emblazoned with a glyph that the TARDIS translates as _power plant_ even though the actual word isn't quite the same. She looks back at the two aliens, and swallows again, and presses her obsidian palm into the wall.

The doors open.

The Doctor's bouncing through before Arkytior even really gets a good luck at what's inside - towers of machinery, wires and lights and blinking computer screens all jostling for space, a vague idea of massive magnet coils, and she's -

She blinks, eyes unfocusing as time-sense zeroes in on the heart of the deadness. On the sparking lines of timeline hooks, approximated fixed points, pulling at the paradox at the center of this City. On the Splinter Engine.

"Oh, but this is _brilliant!_ " the Doctor crows, ahead of her, sonic out and scanning. "Arkytior, _look_ , they're taking power from their _own_ broken timelines, surviving on the same thing that put them in this position in the first place - " and he spins, darting toward a control panel, delighted. "They've even got retrochronal activators set up, they've got half a paradox machine in here keeping them existent," he says enthusiastically. "I mean, completely timeblind species, barely even _aware_ of the War, and they build this!"

Which is when he stops, frowning. He turns to Arkytior slowly, calculating, eyes dark. "Powered by the War. Except the War's over now, and their timelines have stabilized. So the light is running out. There's no more temporal distortion of that scale anywhere - except," he says, and then his eyes widen, and then everything flares at once.

Time Lord sense adjust fast; Arkytior only winces, one hand going up over her eyes, but every humanoid in the room reels as the lights flash sunlight-bright (never seen true light, the scientist part of her calculates, used to the icy dusk.) She staggers back a little; eyes watering - and it's not _just_ the light either. The room is warmer, brighter, more comfortable, the screens glowing steadily, and the timelines are growing again. Everything re-setting.

Her eyes meet the Doctor's. [Theta - ]

"Cthylla," Deia swears, almost astonished, squinting at a screen. "There's - "

"A new power source," a technician says, that same painful hope blooming in their voice. "The Engines have found a new power source! And it's - " They swallow, apparently shocked. "These readings - this is more sheer complexity than _any_ of the records, this is off the scales, the Engines have - "

"The Engines have never processed a splintered timeline like this," the Doctor finishes.

The humanoids are all staring. She's still busy squinting through the new light in the higher realities, trying to figure out what it's hooked into, what the power source is. It has to be in this room. It has to be -

The Doctor takes her hand.

A tangle of conflicting emotions rip through the bond, and resolve to [we need to get back to the TARDIS now]

She sends back a vague kind of [irritation,] quickly turning to [what's going on? what's the power source? I can't find it - ]

He pauses, suddenly; even through the bond she can't figure out what he's thinking.

[theta?]

[arkytior,] he sends, after a moment. [it runs off the Time War. the War in Heaven. you heard ywerin. it runs off the ambient chronal energy produced by a complex space-time event. and - ]

Another pause. She digs in, the bond pulsing a furious [?]

And then Ywerin steps forward - sudden - diverting her attention. "Er," he starts, looking almost terrified now - terrified, she realizes, of _her._ "What species did you say you were again?"

[we're the only things that survived the War,] the Doctor says, almost reluctantly [and you were on gallifrey but I've been travelling for so long, arkytior - my biodata's hooked into half the planets in this reality.]

She gets it.

[we're the most complex space-time events _left,_ ] he finishes. [we're all the power source this City could ever need.]

She's already opened her mouth - even the Doctor recognizes it too late, too preoccupied with fighting his own memories of the War. All he has time for is a desperate [arkytior _no - ]_

(And she wonders what it means that they just _assumed_ she'd lie)

Her back straight, her eyes proud, the Dreamer tells the truth. "We're Time Lords."

There's a pause that's far too long for comfort; terrified half-blind humanoid eyes staring at her from every angle.

"Oh, _Cthylla_ ," Deia whispers.

And Arkytior knows they've just made a mistake.


	6. The City That Never Was--Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mods are asleep post giant squid angst  
> (read: badwolfgirl can't get to her laptop, so this is a relatively unfiltered anarchitect revision, all mistakes esp. possible pronoun confusion are mine)  
> also: this is turning out to be a three-parter. whoops hahaha er  
>  **quick Note: anarchitect and badwolfgirl are rewriting She Who Dreams and reposting it; be sure to check it out and subscribe!**

The City That Never Was-Part Two

There's a long silence, where no one moves, hardly even breathing, neither the Council nor the Time Lords wanting to break the standoff tension first.

It's one of the blue-robed men who speaks first, eventually: a choked incredulous exhale. "Time Lords." It sounds like a legend, when he says it; like a monster story told to children who won't go to sleep. Like tales of Zagreus - Arkytior remembers, in her home in the Capitol, lying in bed, telling herself that story. Maybe you're aware, on some level, that they exist, but that doesn't mean you expect them to _show up._

"Well, yes," the Doctor says, an edge to his voice, radiating [tension] into the room "but we're the _good_ ones."

Deia only stares, incredulity flickering in her pale eyes. "Time Lords - there's no such _thing,_ that's a story." It's obvious though, that nobody in the room believes it, that they never have. "It's only - " she starts, her voice small. "Oh - ice be merciful - the War in Heaven, has the War in Heaven come back?"

[the time war] the Doctor whispers to Arkytior, gripping her hand tightly. [they mean the time war, the second war in heaven, they _know_ ] and then it dissolves into a tangle of [griefguiltfear] and [they know what i've done] before he slams his shields down, gets himself under control.

[they're timeblind] she protests, staring at Deia. [that's not possible - how would they? it took place on planes of reality they can't even conceive of - ]

[things leak down] the Doctor explains hurriedly. [leftover from things that never happened, a kind of ancestral memory with no origin - same reason the humans in the pandorica's reality still kind of remembered stars] and in the air he only says "No. No, it's not coming back."

Arkytior works it out in her head, calculating, but the way the Citizens are staring at her knocks her off that train of thought.

"The War in Heaven," Deia confirms, pale eyes blank with shock. "You fought in the War in Heaven. The Great Houses and the Enemy, titans battling in the skies with no regard for the mortals they crush underneath - the conflict that took our _sun._ "

Arkytior glances at the Doctor, eyes flickering, finally asks the question. "How can you still remember your sun? It was wiped from existence."

Deia looks uncomfortable. "...We remember." She swallows. "Are you still - "

"Because _you_ wiped it," a Coucil member blurts, hands over over mouth, like she can't quite understand it. "Time Lords, _here -_ " She giggles, slightly deliriously. "I never thought you'd look this _normal._ "

The Doctor shifts, beside her, and she doesn't know if she should try to stop him or not but either way it's too late. "Not just Time Lords," he admits, quiet, almost resigned. Like a confession. "The last of the Time Lords. We were the only two to survive.

The technician, still pressed against the machinery, makes a funny noise; everyone jumps. "The last," they repeat, eyes wide. "To survive what?"

The Doctor - his hand tightens in hers, shields too tight even for her to see in. Eyes dark as the space between stars, cold and hard and razor-sharp - and even then she feels it, the shift of power in the room. For the first time in a long while, she considers his timeline; full of impossibilities and paradoxes and even anti-time, alternate histories twining around his bones, so many things that never could have happened and did anyway. Quite possibly the most complex space-time event left. She's a Time Lady, she was in the War, but she stayed on Gallifrey until the very end. Her biodata, while more complicated than anything a timeblind creature could achieve, is still nothing against his - and it's him that's powering the Splinter Engines.

"The War's over," he says, quite calmly, voice low and far too smooth. Maybe he's even smiling. "I saw the War, I fought the War - maybe I was the cause of it. But I ended it, too." He spreads hands wide - not holding her hand anymore, and what does it mean that she didn't notice - and bows, an exaggerated sardonic movement, elegant and terrible. When he looks up, his eyes are almost kind. "You don't have to worry about the Great Houses of the Time Lords _or_ the Enemy, anymore," he says, and she can hear the grief in it.

For a moment, everything's quiet.

He takes her hand again, soft; it's almost enough to make her believe he's okay. The Citizens stare. Frozen. Waiting.

"Don't _move._ "

Everybody jumps except the Doctor; Deia's grabbed some kind of energy weapon off the wall, long and deadly-looking and nearly glowing with power - the Splinter Engines must have it recharged it, too - and aimed directly at them. Her voice shakes, but her hands don't. "Stay exactly where you freezing are."

"They're _Time Lords_ ," one man interjects helplessly.

Deia grits her teeth. "Yes, I noticed that, thank you very much."

He looks uncertain. "They can't - I mean, they're gods, they can't _die._ "

"No," says Deia, and takes a breath. "But I think I can hurt them. Am I right?"

Neither the Doctor nor the Dreamer respond; she continues anyway.

"You heard them - they're a power source. And if the Splinter Engines run off the War, like _he_ said, and the War's over, they're the only power source left. If we can keep them here - they could power the City until the stars go out."

Arkytior bites her lip, automatically calculating. They're right, in a way; if left to live out her regenerations one by one, she could probably survive until the heat-death of the universe, now that time is so _short._ "You'd lock us up and use as living batteries," she says, watching Deia's eyes carefully. "For billions of years."

Deia won't blink. "If I have to. To save the City."

"I don't think it'll be that easy to keep _us_ in a box," Arkytior says, lips curling back, back straight. "I - "

It's the Doctor who stops her, shakes his head. "Arkytior.

The Councillors look at each other uneasily.  
"Nobody's locking anybody up," the Doctor says clearly, the dark gone from his eyes now. (Or better hidden). "Our timeship can charge up the local timelines - not something I'd usually do, but you lot are used to distortion - power the City indefinitely. We can help you build escape ships. The Shadow Proclamation take refugees, they can find you a home, or they can bring you back to this one, except with a way out this time if things go bad. You don't have to rely on the Splinter Engines, or live under the ice. Okay?"

Deia hesitates for just a second - -and then Ywerin speaks up.

"Your ship, where is it?" he asks, suspicious. "I didn't see any kind of - time-and-space-ship anywhere."

The Doctor smiles brightly. "You wouldn't, she's very good at hiding. She's" - he coughs, suddenly looking like a child with its fingers caught in the cookie jar - "er, well, we may have landed Her on a hazardous waste chute. But that shouldn't be _too_ hard to get back…."

He trails off, watching Deia's face harden.

"...Right?"

"... The waste chutes lead straight into the ocean," the technician says, and swallows uncertainly. "It's - well, it's a long way down."

The Doctor blinks. "Oh."

Arkytior rolls her eyes. "I _told_ you you should've let me drive," she grumbles before she can think better of it.

"I know Her better than you," he answers, almost petulantly.

"You _failed_ your driver's test!" She shakes her head. "And you threw the manual into a _supernova_ , so now you can't even fix Her if She breaks. Is that proper TT capsule protocol, oh all-knowing Doctor?"

Affronted, he mock-glares. "I've done a fine job of fixing Her. _Without_ the manual."

Arkytior opens her mouth to respond, then closes it, suddenly not so sure; the Council is still staring. "Ah, don't you have submarines?" she asks after a moment. "We can't just _leave_ our ship out there."

"There's monsters," the Council man states. "The - the great beasts, the darkness-dwellers, in the water. The Cthylla. You can't see them, but you _feel_ them."

"We can handle the monsters," the Doctor opinions cheerfully, and shrugs. "That's what we do - travel around the universe and stop the monsters."

Deia shakes her head, slowly. "I can't let you go."

The Doctor's annoyed now. "Well, none of you can fly our ship, now can you?"

"We can't risk our only possible power source," Deia says, and then straightens, deciding, going hard. "You aren't going anywhere."

The Doctor doesn't move. "Then how are we supposed to get the TARDIS back, exactly?"

"It'll simply have to stay in the ocean, where it fell." Deia's smile is cold. "Come - and careful how swiftly you move, Time Lords."

~o*o~

Separate cells. Naturally. Housed close to the Engines themselves, but not _too_ close.

Arkytior sighs, tries not to worry about the Doctor, and paces the perimeter of the tiny room.

( _tries_ being the operative word, of course.)

There's a guard outside, watching her as she paces, afraid. She studies him out of the corner of her eye - the hastily-thrown-on uniform, the subtle dead-end impossibility of his timeline, the nervous way he holds his gun. Trying to brandish it threateningly, but his hands shake.

He's definitely afraid.

She could make use of that.

She makes another circuit of the room, focused on the barely-there psychic signal coming from the mindblind humanoid; waiting - and just as he glances back at her she snaps her head up and stares him in the eyes.

He visibly jumps, makes a small scared noise, nearly dropping the weapon. (Not a gun, not really, but she'll stick with that - for lack of a better term.)

Arkytior takes a deep breath, then moves forward to the front of the cell. He takes a step back, then quickly brings the gun up to point at her.

"Let me talk to Deia," she says, carefully, the outlines of a plan brewing in her head. And add, almost as an afterthought: "Please."

"I'm not letting you out," the guard denies nervously. "You're - a Time Lord." The way he says it makes it sound like _god,_ or _demon -_ or, no, not even that. Like a human being might say _gravity._ Something ancient and fundamental and unimaginably powerful.

The funny thing is, of course, that he's not far off.

"Time Lady," she mutters under her breath. "You don't _need_ to let me out," she explains reasonably, "just have her come here. We need to talk."

"Why?"

She cocks her head, deliberately alien. "That's not your problem."

His eyes flicker back and forth like a trapped animal's, even though she's the one behind a forcefield. "I can't - "

"Look, _boy,_ " she announces, "what do you have to lose? If, like you say, I'm a Time Lady, then I could get out of this cell whenever I want, don't you think? Consider this a compromise. I stay here, I don't rip your timeline out of its moorings with my bare hands, and you _get Deia._ " The threat is empty - she can't do anything more than push at probabilites to bring them into her favor, on her own, without a TARDIS - but _he_ doesn't know that.

He fumbles for a communicator hanging from his belt, hastily brings it up to his mouth. "Counciller Deia, ma'am, the, er, Time Lady wants to talk to you. She's very serious."

There's a long, suspicious pause, and then Deia's voice crackles through the air. "...I'm coming."

[=l=]

Deai arrives a moment later, comes to stand in front of the transparent forcefield with a carefully-constructed expression of aristocratic annoyance on her face. "What is it, Dreamer?"

(The plan is complete, now; she knows what to say, and she's painfully aware that he Doctor will _not_ be happy when he figures it out.)

She cuts to the chase. "Deia, you said you can't let us go find the TARDIS, because you won't risk your power source."

Deia looks wary. "Yes."

"But you only need _one_ Time Lord to power the Splinter Engines." Arkytior takes a deep breath, steels herself, suddenly glad for the separate cells. "You don't need to keep both of us here. Either of us can fly the ship back up, and even if we fail you'll still have the other one."

Deia opens her mouth - Arkytior talks over her, urgent.

"And, Deia, if you're keeping one of us - I'm a Time Lady, true enough, there is artron in my bones, but my timelines aren't especially complex. They're no more twisted than any time traveller's, any being who survived the War. I _could_ power the City, probably, but it would be a close thing. The Doctor, on the other hand - "

[[[ the Warrior is storm and fire and dark, a force of nature more than a being, anti-time and paradox and so many things he should have never survived, so many planets she never saw - a complex space-time event, possibly _the_ most complex, that just happens to be sentient - the Oncoming Storm - ]]]

Except that that's not her story to tell, and never has been. She cuts herself off, doesn't hesitate, keeps going. "Just believe me when I say he's at the center of it all."

Deia doesn't speak; looks at her sidelong. "Our instruments have indeed determined that the one you call the Doctor is considerably more…. complicated."

Arkytior looks at her straight. "Let me take a submarine to find our ship. You've got nothing to lose by letting me free. What could I do, anyway?"

Deia takes a breath - the mask cracking slightly. "You could seek revenge."

Arkytior stares for a moment - and then she gets it, almost laughs. "Don't be silly. Keep the Doctor as a - hostage, if you're worried about it, but _really._ We're not your enemy, Deia. We caused this - everyone in this City is a victim of our War - and I can promise you, neither I nor the Doctor will leave this City before we are certain you are safe."

A long, drawn-out silence.

Arkytior bites her lip, pressing against the forcefield. "Trust me."

Deia hesitates, then sighs. "Fine. I will send one man to escort you to the submarines and explain how to operate them, but you will go out _alone_. And if the Cthylla eat you-well, perhaps then the Doctor will be more compliant."

(That's the exact opposite of the truth, but she's not about to mention that.)

"Thank you," Arkytior says softly, resisting the impulse to open the cell with her sonic. Instead, she waits while Deia presses her obsidian palm against a panel embedded in the wall by the forcefield.

The golden surface powers down. Arkytior steps out, watches the guard train his gun on her, deliberately keeps herself relaxed and calm - every motion smooth and obvious. As unthreatening as inhumanly possible. She considers trying for a smile, but suspects it might be counterproductive.

"Ervin, escort the Time Lady to the submarine bay and explain to her the submarine controls. You are not to accompany her to her ship."

"Yes, Councillor," Ervin says stiffly. "Come, Time Lady."

[=l=]

The Doctor's been trying to make conversation with a stoically terrified guard for about an hour or so when it happens.

He's just about convinced the guard to go make them both some tea when other guards rush in and the conversation gets cut off; he scrambles upright, frowning, but after a hushed flurry of conversation between the guards all they do is deactivate the forcefield and let him free.

This strike him as extremely suspicious. It's technically possible that they want to get him closer to the Engines, but they were, after all, designed to feed off the timelines of the entire City; they shouldn't have any trouble feeding off his from here. (If he focuses, he thinks he can seetastefeel it, the Engines hooking into the local timespace - not painful, exactly, not even uncomfortable, more like moving through deep water. Everything reacts just that bit more slowly, and everything's tinted the deep icy blue of the ocean outside.)

"You know," he remarks to one of the guard as they lead him down a corridor "usually if you're going to go to the trouble of locking someone up, you don't just let them right back out again."

"This doesn't qualify as _usual_ , in my opinion," Deia calls from down the hall. She strides up to him, white robe flowing behind her. "The Splinter Engines have focused on your timeline, now, and there's nowhere for you to go-no point in keeping you locked up."

The Doctor nods his understanding, gives her a friendly kind of smile. Not necessarily the smartest decision, but these seem to be decent people - unless they've already made the calculations, and understand that if he really wants to run and leave them to die, they couldn't stop him. Something occurs to him; he cocks his head, suddenly confused. "Where's the Dreamer?"

Deia takes a deep breath. "Her submarine undocked three and a half clicks ago."

The Doctor doesn't seem to react at all; instead, he simply freezes, the same expression staying motionless on his face.

"She told me - " Deia explains nervously " - she said it was _your_ timeline we needed for the Splinter Engines. I allowed her to take a submarine out in search of your Ship, as she requested. Was this not correct?"

"No, that's perfectly accurate," the Doctor says comfortably, slipping out of the freeze with a slightly disconcerting jerk. "If you built the Splinter Engines exactly right, it's very possible that I could power most of a planet. Or maybe I'm lying about that too. I don't suppose you'll let me go after her?"

"Out of the question," Deia says immediately, but there's a note of doubt in her voice.

"Well then," he smiles, "I suppose that's settled. Oh - I _do_ hate her sometimes, you know. _Especially_ when she's cleverer than me."

She hesitates, unsure.

"Right," he hums cheerfully, "do you lot have any sort of communications center, where I could get in contact with the sub?"

Deia nods again, still uncertain. "Follow me."

"Wonderful," he announces, and sets off down the corridor before she's actually moved. "Oh, and Deia?" he adds, suddenly spinning to face her again, grinning. His voice is still at exactly the same friendly note, as if it's stuck there.

She takes a careful breath. "Yes?"

"If you let her die out there, I will _burn_ your City and every single person living in it to the ground," he says cheerfully, and turns to walk away. "Just so we're clear."

[=l=]

Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all.

Arkytior bites her lip and concentrates on the ocean around her, reaching for the faint bond she shares with the TARDIS in the hopes that it'll lead her to the ship's location. The Doctor would've been a better choice for this, really - the bond between timeship and pilot is always strongest, and the echo-connection the Bad Wolf left her with can only do so much - but that's not an option. She'll have to make do.

But it's _hard_ , and she only has so much time before she'll _have_ to return to the City-while the submarine is, like everything else, powered by the Splinter Engines, it can only withstand the immense pressure and cold for so long.

Static flares and crackles through the small ship, and then the Doctor's voice comes across the comm. "Arkytior, what _are_ you _doing_?"

She takes a breath, makes sure her voice is calm; she knew he'd get to the comms eventually. "Finding the TARDIS and getting us out of here," she answers. "What did you think I was doing, going fishing?"

"Not funny," he snaps out in response, and she doesn't need the bond to feel the tension-anger-fear she knows he's feeling. "Just come back to the City."

"This is our only chance to find the TARDIS. Without Her we're stranded here and we can't help the City any," she points out.

"Arkytior, please," the Doctor pleads. "It isn't safe. We can figure something out, we can build a homing beacon, we have _time,_ you don't have to do this. There's - "

She ignores him, wrenches the vehicle forward through the inky blue-blackness of the ocean. The TARDIS _is_ near, she can _feel_ Her, but it's almost impossible to see through the supercooled water, and the light on the sub's nose flickers and surges unpredictably.

"Arkytior, listen to me-just come back. Please?" Static crackles across the comm, but it can't quite hide the _fear_ in the Doctor's voice.

"Theta, I know She's out here-I'm not coming back to the City until I find Her-"

Something heavy and massive slams into the sub, sending it rocking away through the thick water and Arkytior swears. "Other's grave, you stupid thing, behave," she mutters under her breath, dragging the controls back to the course she'd set.

"Arkytior, is something wrong?"

"No, not as such," she says-and then static blares across the line again and then everything _crashes_ , and she swears again. "Oh, Omega's mask, I think it's the, whatever they call them, the 'monsters'-"

There's a massive burst of static, the submarine shudders and _twists_ , and everything goes dark.

[=l=]

The comm cuts off, and doesn't come back, and even the crackle of static fades out into nothingness, and still the Doctor does not move.

One hand is loose around the comm mic - staring off out the window into the deep-blue of the ocean outside. He looks almost relaxed, or would, but he's _too_ still, _too_ frozen; a mannequin posed to emulate humanity, to emulate tranquility, and underneath it so piano-wire tense you can _feel_ the breaking point approaching,

Deia can't even see him breathe.

Which is probably because he isn't. Respiratory bypass kicked in automatically the instant Arkytior's signal died, holding him in the liminal space between one heartsbeat and the next. Running the same calculations over and over again, and getting the same result.

Thinking so fast you can almost see the bluescreen error text floating in those blank ancient eyes.

"Doctor," Deia starts, almost hesitantly, "I'm sorry."

A switch flips and he's moving, spinning in the chair, breathing again. It's _almost_ smooth enough to be real, but there's still that _jerk,_ that blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment when things change - like a glitch in the air, forcing himself back into movement with a static-laced _snap._ "Sorry for what?"

She tries not to flinch. (Some part of her, distantly, wonders why he terrifies her so much more than the other one, the Dreamer - when the Dreamer is cool-imperious, like a goddess should be, and he's perfectly friendly, and perfectly polite, and perfectly _wrong._ And then something else shuts that line of thought down before it can go anywhere.) She shakes her head. "For your… loss."

"Oh, the Dreamer!" the Doctor says, as if just remembering. "No, that's all right, she's not dead."

Deia tries to make sense of this "Not... dead. But the Cthylla - "

"We have a telepathic bond, you see," the Doctor explains, overriding her easily. "She's in my head, and I'm in hers. It's not really _live_ when we're not in immediate contact, but it is there. I'd have felt it if she died. Or regenerated, except you don't know what that is." He waves his hands. "Feels like a great big fwoosh of artron, that second one, you can see it light-years away if you know what you're looking for, your instruments would have picked it up too. The first one just feels like silence."

"Like Silence," Deia repeats.

"Yes," he agrees companionably. "And I know silence, Councillor Deia of Woman Wept. I've lived with it for a long time."

"Doctor, are you - "

"You know, all these computer bits laying around, you could probably build a relay circuit. In fact," he says, and pauses, pulls his sonic from his pocket and flips it in the air, "I think that's what I'm going to do."

He darts past Deia, picking up bits and bobs as he passes. "The comm is down-probably a malfunction with the antenna-so to restore communications with the submarine I'll have to get a bit creative."

"Doctor," Deia tries, watching him with a concerned look, "what exactly _are_ you doing?"

"It's the face," he grumbles. "No one ever listens to this face. I'm building a long-range telepathic relay circuit. Time Lords, telepathic species, you see," he adds, tapping his temple, "and I can use the relay to reach Arkytior's mind, and maybe even convince my ship to come up here of her own volition. So to speak."

Deia frowns. "But she has to be dead. The Cthyl would've cracked the sub like an eggshell."

The Doctor dances back to the desk and drops the parts on top if it, completely ignoring the woman. He flips his sonic again, for added effect, and presses it against two wires.

And as the citizens watch in shocked, nervous silence, he starts to hum.


	7. The City That Never Was--Part Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The culmination of the original adventure arc. Next up comes The Doctor's Wife.

She had not  _ meant _ to land over the drop-chute, but the broken-dead-gone city made it difficult for Her to see. She had felt (would feel? was feeling?) Her Thief’s sheepish embarrassment, and through him Their Rose’s amusement--neither had realized that She had fallen so far.

Thief and Rose will come for Her soon, however; She knows this quite well. And so She is quite content to merely sit and wait for them.

Then something  _ prods _ Her, something huge and ancient, something huge and ancient and  _ singing _ . She rises, suddenly curious, Her nonlinear mind reaching out in response-melody

The songs harmonize.

[  w  h  a  t  ]

[ a  r  e ]

[ y  o  u  ]

She feels a kind of pleasure, a connection-joy; the other mind is not the same as would be one of Her kind, but it is close. She is last of the timeships, and she tells the other one so

[  w  e  a  r  e   a  l  i  k  e ] it hums, voice slow and deep and old. [  w  e   s  i  n  g  t  h  e   s  o  n  g   o  f   t  h  e   u  n  i  v  e  r  s  e  ]

She agrees, because it is true, and because She likes them, these sister-singers.

There’s silence (not Silence, not Song-end, but silence-that-is-absence-of-speech). She is curious, and so She asks the question, breaking the absence-silence.

The Question, of course, being what exactly the sister-singer  _ is _ .

[  i   a  m   c  t  h  y  l   o  n  c  e   w  e   w  e  r  e   m  a  n  y   b  u  t   w  e   h  a  v  e   d  w  i  n  d  l  e  d  ]

And yet, She notes, the Song has not stopped. 

[  t  h  e   s  o  n  g   w  i  l  l   n  o  t   e  n  d   w  h  i  l  e   o  n  e   o  f   u  s   y  e  t   l  i  v  e  s   t  o   s  i  n  g   i  t  ]

The TARDIS hums, satisfied.

[  c  i  t  y  s  h  i  p   c  o  m  e  s   s  e  a  r  c  h  e  s  ] it tells Her, framed with a nervous kind of worry. They don’t like the City or the City-mortals, they think of them as Danger, but She is not the same as they are. 

The message She sends back is a comfort more than anything else; She knows who’s coming for Her, and She knows that they are good. Thief is still in the City, She feels him broken-edged but holding on and feels a flash of pride; it must be Rose. Thief is still in the City, She knows, so it must be Rose. But the ocean is too cold and heavy for Her Time Lords, even--it will not work, this looking for Her. 

She has an idea.

The sister-singer listens attentively; She hums out Her request. A favour.

[  i  f   i  t   c  a  n   b  e   d  o  n  e  ] the other one roars, [ i  t   i  s   y  o  u  r  s  ]

The TARDIS sings to the Cthyl an image - Herself and the Cityship and Her Rose, at the City’s entrance

[  t  h  e   c  i  t  i  z  e  n  s   d  e  s  p  i  s  e   u  s  ] the sister protests, laced with confusion. 

She sings a laugh, shows Her almost-sister the many faces of Her Thief and Her Rose. They are not citizens--they are not singers, either, but they are close. Time dances around them, flows and bends to their wills, the last of the Time-Shapers, the Watch-Makers --no, they are not citizens.

The Cthyll considers, and decides. [  i   w  i  l  l   d  o   t  h  i  s   t  h  i  n  g  ]

The TARDIS hums a bright and joyful song, warm and golden, and through the thin-unbreakable bond with Her Thief She showers him with eager happiness.

[=|=]

The lights flash for a moment, and Arkytior reels back - realizes with a funny dislocated kind of confusion that it isn’t the lights at all, that the sheer physicality of the ship hasn’t changed - something else some deeper, that it’s her  _ vision  _ that flashed. 

She lies blinded on the submarine floor and tries to figure out how to breathe as her mind tries to process the signal. (A fleeting impression of endless time and endless night and endless ocean, bone-pale flashes in dark water, sinuous albino limbs lined with suckers and many many many mouths and no light ever) and it all turns into a repeated  _ too much too much too much  _ even for a Time Lord brain to process - [[[like a timeship, but not quite, and more melody and less of the clock’s endless rationality, all in her head at once]]] - 

It recedes, a little. 

She gets her breathing under control, deliberately toggles her heartsbeat down to a more reasonable level, and listens. 

The message booms all around her - wordless, a series of emotions and memories and stories in the form of a song - but quieter, now, quiet enough for her to make sense of it. It sounds like - 

\- an  _ apology. _

[   s   o   r   r   y   ]

 

She picks herself up gingerly, carefully, still slightly off-kilter. Nothing’s broken, body or mind - no, wait, the communications antennae, and how does she know that? She frowns, hesitates, runs a system diagnostic--the comm antenna  _ has  _ been broken off, but that’s all.

The presence (which still feels disconcertingly like a smaller version of a timeship to her) must have told her. She can feel it all around, trying to stay out of her head, almost polite. 

And then the submarine jerks, and shudders, and starts moving - knocking her off-balance all over again. (Moving - up?) She swears in distracted Gallifreyan, reaches for the console - and then stops, because according to the diagnostic readouts the engines aren’t on. The ship’s being  _ pulled.  _ By something that could only be one of the Cthylla.

[  f  e  a  r   n  o  t  ] the wordless projection says. It sounds pleased with itself.

It hits her like a flipped switch - the Cthyl and the thing holding the ship and timeship-like projection around her are one and the same.

She runs a hand through her hair and stares out the window into the dark. Right. She can deal with this. She’s being dragged through an planet-sized supercooled ocean by a giant telepathic squid in search of a 1960s police box, but she is a Time Lady and she stays calm. 

The obvious question seems to be; if it can project to her, can she signal back?

She takes a breath. [i need my Ship]

A vague hum of [confusion] and nothing else. 

She tries again, less words and more image-feeling, mental communication itn its purest form. [need-ship-Her-bluebox-stranded-save]

The Cthyll - well, not smiles, but it has the same effect. [  l  o  o  k  ]

She looks.

Outside the window, a long, pale tentacle swirls past, and it’s wrapped around a familiar (and glowing, slightly) blue box.

The TARDIS sends a signal that isn’t exactly an obnoxiously cheerful wave but feels like it, and She feels distinctly  _ smug _ .

Arkytior narrows her eyes. [are you  _ gloating? _ ]

The TARDIS only grins.

Arkytior rolls her eyes, torn between annoyance and relief. [don’t do that, you scared me] she sends, still a little shaky, then takes a deep breath - reaches for the Cthyl’s mind again. [city-take-us?]

Agreement. [ w  e   g  o  ]

And they do. 

The Cthyll moves fast, fluid but slightly disorienting; she leans back in the seat and tries to breathe again. The TARDIS sings a slow ancient song to her that vaguely reminds her of orange skies and silver-leaved trees and watching the transduction barrier open to reveal stars. She wonders, momentarily, how the Doctor’s doing - with the comms down. 

And then she doesn’t have to wonder. 

The telepathic blast hits hard, only increasingly her already sizable headache; she winces, ignoring the Cthyll’s sudden worried query, as the bond goes  _ live.  _ Crackles with artron and electricity at the back of her head and then the static turns into -

[arkytior what happened are you safe?] the Doctor projects frantically, words accompanied with a wave of [alonelastroseno] and sheer raw [terror.]

Arkytior takes a deep breath and holds on, fingernails digging into the arm rests, sending [calm] and [breathe]. 

The bloody fear subsides, a little; the [relief] washes over her like sunlight, closely followed by [lovelovelovelovelove]

She closes her eyes, focuses. [long-range telepathic relay?]

[yes] he answers, and then halfway into an explanation it morphs into a question: [what happened?]

[lost the antenna] she signals, with some effort. [the cthylla are telepathic; one contacted me, is towing me back to the city now. It has the TARDIS, i think She convinced it to help us, She’s very smug about it]

There’s something that’s nearly silence, and then a quiet [i’m glad you’re alright]

[i need you to convince deia to open the doors] she sends back, deciding not to mention the trickle of rather cold water she’s just noticed by the airlock. [...sooner rather than later

[working on it right now] he sends cheerfully, and then the electricity cuts off, devolving into busy calculations and at least one clear thought of [i wonder if that guard would still bring me tea - ]

She smiles.

[=|=]

The Doctor carefully takes his hands off the circuits, feeling the bond cut out as the skin contact disappears; spins to face Deia, grinning like a loon. “Ha! Right, Councillor, do you have any kind of scanner around here?”

“Yes,” she starts slowly, pointing at one of the machines, “but--”

“Brilliant,” he proclaims, and brandishes the sonic, producing an annoyed whine from the machine. “That should do it.” 

She frowns. “Doctor, whatever are you doing?”

“Locating,” he declares, and doesn’t explain, because very suddenly he doesn’t need to. 

The shape on the scanner isn’t clear - an impression of tentacles and mouths more than anything else - but she recognizes it instantly. Can’t help but recognize it; it’s been trained into her since she was born.

“Paradox save us, a Cthyl,” she chokes.

“Yes, isn’t that wonderful?” He beams. “Telepathic time-sensitive ice squid. Love it. To the gates!”

He moves fast, almost bouncing; Deia trails after him, carefully tailored robes in disarray, still looking faintly terrified. (And she  _ still  _ hasn’t worked out how he know where everything is without ever having been here before.) He dashes down corridors and hallways unerringly, ignoring the suddenly-panicked guards and shocked orderlies - and brings them out on a terrace facing the round steel doors (circular and nearly five stories high) of the submarine airlock - 

The doors are closing.

The Doctor spins to stare at her, at the danger-red lights flashing. “What’s happening?”

She straightens, pushes her hair back into place, takes a breath. “The scanner picked up a Cthyl heading straight for us. We are preparing to defend the City.”

He blinks, apparently blindsided. “Defending?”

“It’s the  _ Cthylla, _ ” she snaps, “it killed your mate and it’ll kill us too. The walls can keep it out, but we are  _ not  _ leaving the airlock open, what do you think?”

His mouth falls open. “You think it’s your  _ enemy _ ?”

Now it’s her turn to stare. “Of course it’s our enemy!”

“No - “ He turns again, looking out at the doors, and spins back. “No, I just - I just  _ talked  _ to Arkytior, that was what the telepathic relay was - it’s on our side, it has my Ship and your submarine, you can’t lock it  _ out. _ ” He’s talking fast, frantic, but all she can do is hold her ground. 

“I will not risk my City, Doctor.”

“You have to let them in,” he pleads. “You  _ need  _ to let them in. Arkytior only has air for so long.” And there’s something truly vulnerable about the way he stands, the look in his eyes making her suspect this is the first honest thing he’s said - 

No. She shakes her head. “You’re a Time Lord. You’re part of the race that destroyed our sun and created the Cthyll to haunt us. I can’t trust you.”

He looks - she could swear it’s  _ disappointment.  _ “We’re here to help. You must know that by now. Please, Deia, just send the order to open the gates, it’ll all be so much easier if you agree now. You realize that?”

She steps back, hands moving in the automatic warding-rituals supposed to hold the Cthylla back - and if they work on one telepathic monstrosity it’s not too far-fetched to suppose they might work on the other, she thinks crazily. “Don’t - don’t try your mind tricks on me, I know you’re - the legends say you can - ” 

The Doctor looks very very tired, very suddenly. “What do the legends say?”

She opens her mouth. She closes it. 

“You can’t remember, can you? You can’t even remember when you were first told that story, what the story was about, why you know about the War in Heaven. Because you don’t. Not really.” 

“Of course I do,” she snaps instinctively, but she doesn’t believe it. 

“No you don’t.” There’s no anger in his voice. “It’s a memory from a forgotten reality. You  _ understand,  _ instinctively, that it never happened, and that it was true anyway; your perceptions interpreted it as a myth. That’s all. That’s the only reason you know us. But there’s so much that you  _ don’t  _ understand, Deia, so much you can never understand. Your stories, they tell you we wiped our your sun, is that right?”

“You did,” she protests, automatic. “You said you - you have to have done - “

“How did you imagine that?” the Doctor asks, quietly. “Did you imagine it as the culmination of some great battle, the sacrifice made, a thing that required planning and preparation and  _ power _ ?”

He’s leaning against the balcony, bordered on all sides by high railings and long drops, and behind her are miles of hallway and millions of people who serve her and only her, so why does she feel so trapped?

“Deia, do your legends tell you that none of us even  _ noticed _ ? Your sun didn’t  _ matter.  _ There are entire galaxies out there gone now, because some Major Power thought the Enemy might be able to make use of it, or just because some weapon had a little too wide a range, or simply because somebody was having a bad day and took it out on conventional reality. Nobody cared about anything purely physical; it was about  _ meaning.  _ The higher dimensions run on pure symbolism, narrative physics, the laws of  _ story.  _ To attract the attention of the chessmasters orchestrating it all, any given battle had to destroy at least a plane of reality.  _ That’s  _ how big the War was.” 

“I understand that,” she tries to say, tries to stay calm.

And that does annoy him, a little, eyes coming up sharp and dark and narrow. “Don’t be  _ ridiculous _ , of course you don’t _.  _ It was more complex than you could ever begin to imagine, and that was the  _ point.  _ It was tearing reality itself apart. If it went on for much longer, even Inner Time would have collapsed, and then none of us could ever have existed, this version of the universe could never existed. The War turned into Hell. And now it’s  _ gone _ . All of them are gone. Do you know who did that?”

He pauses. His eyes bore holes in the world, portals to something ancient and terrible, and Deia can’t quite breathe - drowning in the darkness of him. Of all the things she will never understand. And just when she thinks she might suffocate -

\- he turns away. 

The answer, when it comes, is simple.

“Me.”

A breath, dust-gold in the icy air. Exhausted

“And I’ve been trying to make up for it for centuries. So please, Deia. I’m here to help. Trust me.” 

She shakes her head automatically, but the resistance is breaking down. “You’re... manipulating me. I won’t be tricked by, by - mind control - “ 

He doesn’t cut her off, exactly, doesn’t talk over her, but she’s stopped anyway. And there’s something that sounds like regret in his voice. “Deia... oh, Deia. You already have been.”

She shrinks back, just a little. 

His voice is casual, staring out over the balcony, not looking at her. “Now go open the doors.”

And Councillor Deia flees.

[=|=]

By the time the Cthyl deposits the submarine and the TARDIS inside the City’s giant airlock, the sub’s oxygen is running low (she’d gone farther out than she’d realized, apparently) and there’s quite a bit more of the cold ocean inside the ship than Arkytior suspects is really  _ beneficial _ . She’s cold and a bit damp and generally annoyed at the delay, but safe. Still safe. And she can feel the Doctor’s relief at that fact through three meters of solid steel.

How exactly he convinced the citizens to open the airlock she’s not quite sure, but given the red-alert lights flashing everywhere and the general state of panic about the place she’s not entirely sure she wants to know. She’s warm, dry, and there’s plenty of oxygen, anyway, and nobody’s hurt, so it can’t have been that bad. 

She walks forward, careful, as the huge doors leading to the City proper groan and start to slide upwards, slowly letting the light in. And there’s the Doctor, on the other side, already moving - and then he’s rolled through the two-foot gap underneath the door, straight through a sloshy puddle of icy seawater, getting all wet, and she barely has time to sigh exasperatedly before he’s reached her. 

She takes a breath instead, relaxing into his embrace, pressing her head against his neck and revelling in the mental contact. 

[missed-you] he signals, softly, and there’s something dark and broken like [regret] humming just under. Automatically, almost unconsciously, she pours herself into that divide, whipping them up into pink and blue and gold and silver - [calm,] and [herenow] and [love.]

Slowly, he relaxes.

[what happened?] she asks, the associated [redlights] and [panic??] making it clear what she’s referring to. 

He hesitates. [they wouldn’t open the airlock.]

Her eyes widen as it registers, but he’s already continuing, hurried. 

[it was because of the cthylla, and i knew the sub had to be running low on oxygen, and, well - if you regenerated in  _ this  _ environment it’d set off a distortion chain, burning through one after the other - i thought i might lose you, i’m sorry. arkytior, i’m sorry.]

She blinks at him, and then she smiles - not with her face, but with her mind, drowning the darkness out. [i’m safe, theta. it doesn’t matter. i’m here, and i’m not leaving.]

[i can’t lose you,] he explains, softly, and then recalibrates. [are you alright?]

She twines their fingers together, tongue between her teeth, grinning. [cold and wet, and a bit of headache, so frankly the sooner we get this lot to the shadow proclamation and find somewhere nice and sunny to go to the better.]

[that would be nice,] he agrees, smiling too now. [with amy and rory.]

[of course] she declares magnanimously. [so let’s get to it.]

They break apart simultaneously, fingers still laced together, turn to face the City; the whole conversation, from an outside perspective, has taken only slightly more than a second. 

Deia’s standing there, the look in her eyes somewhere between exhaustion and fear and hope. “What will you do with us now? You have your ship. You have your way out. We can’t stop you.” 

“No, no,” the Doctor reprimands automatically, quite happily. “We’ll help you build escape pods, send a message to the Shadow Proclamation on your behalf. None of that’s changed. I  _ was  _ telling the truth.” He sounds puffed-up and proud, like a small child with new boots.

Deia takes a deep breath. “Of course. Doctor, Dreamer, I and my City are at your disposal.”

“Right!” the Doctor exclaims, pressing a kiss to Arkytior’s forehead before sweeping forward. “First order of business: get the Splinter Engines focused on the TARDIS, power them up long enough to keep this city going for a couple millennia - and I’m  _ sure  _ I’ve got plans for Shadow Proclamation shuttles  _ somewhere  _ in the library, it’s just that I haven’t really cleaned it up since I accidentally dropped the swimming pool in - ”

[=|=]

The silver-haired Architect stands in front of her computer, frowning. Enough ships to hold the population of - cities orbit the Shadow Proclamation, just… waiting.

And then the screen blinks and a pair of faces appear--a dark-haired man in a bow tie and a green-eyed redhead in a black jacket.

“Hello, Architect! Long time no see. It’s the Doctor,” the man says.

She swears.

“Sorry about the whole stolen planets affair, really. Now, the people in the ships orbiting you right now are from Woman Wept, a remnant of the Time War. Refugees. They need a place to settle. I  _ will _ be checking up on them, so think carefully about what you do next.”

Before the Architect can form a response, the picture is gone.

After a moment of thought, she reaches for the screen and taps on it, then speaks. “Hailing the leader of the refugees from Woman Wept. This is the Architect of the Shadow Proclamation…”

[=|=]

The TARDIS watches Her Thief and Their Rose as they dance about Her console room, sending Her spinning through the Vortex.

Her emotions are not the same as Their emotions; they are slower and older and infinitely wider, and in that sense it is difficult to express them by lower-dimensional means, by such a insignificant thing as  _ language.  _ She is, however, reasonably certain, that the thing She feels is anticipation. 

Anticipation edged with Terror laced with Joy full of Wanting; Her nonlinear-chronal mind shivers with it,  _ knowing  _ what is to come and waiting for it, waiting for the green-Glow to enter Her circuits and bring Her down. 

She knows this. It is the Time They Talk.


	8. The Doctor's Wife--Part One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter also cowritten with anarchitect.

The Doctor's Wife-Part One

She's lost.

Debris surrounds her; an ocean of clutter, orphaned bits and pieces of long-gone lives, vortex strata. Children's dolls, and snatches of song, and abandoned masks made of bone and marked with paradox. What's left, when everything else is gone.

They told a story, in her home reality, when she was young. A story about the end of the world, about the last day, and what's left after that; the last remnants of a dying universe. The Place Where All The Lost Things Go.

Is that where she is?

(There's a kind of glow in her head; a glow she cannot seem to focus on, nor quite push away.)

She is -

She was at a party. Wasn't she? A _fine_ party, with her friends, dancing and fine wine and laughter. (Green spills over her thoughts and cold down her spine, drowning her out.) And she - and then there was something, a transition, a jump-cut, and she was here.

There's a woman whose name (or not name, but what she is called) is Auntie pulling her down the ramshackle shadows (leaned against one another, and over the other, like old friends or corpses) of the hallway, and a man-thing called Uncle to her other side -

(It doesn't occur to her to wonder why she knows this.)

How long has she been here?

The wine could, perhaps, explain the fog in her head, but not why it feels so distinctly _green_. (Or gold. Is it gold? Box-blue and artron-gold. How does she knows this?)

Uncle's in front of her now. She blinks, trying to focus, taking in the green-and-shadow of the room she's in, the pedestal spiraling patchwork upwards and the endless dark beneath the grille floor. "Will it be me, Uncle?"

"Yes, it's going to be you." he says, with great gravity, bobbing his head to a beat she can't hear. "I only wish I could take your place." And then, utterly casually, with no change in tone: "Nah, I don't, because it's really going to hurt."

There's something behind her (green-glow) and she can't help but jump. The strange thing is that she knows what's behind her before she turns - a syncopated kind of deja vu, as if she's living in two realities at once and they are ever so slightly out of sync. Watching things happen and something glitches at the back of her head and she

(Nonlinear existence: things filter backwards, like quicksilver fish moving upstream, fighting against the current she can feel washing away around her.) She feels herself inhale, half-shocked. "It's starting. What will happen?"

"Oh, er," Auntie drawls vaguely, "Nephew will drain your mind from your body and leave your body empty."

She turns, halfway on the Pedestal, pulling her dress (bought it in the Sixth Quadrant fifteen credits only wonderful piece of workmanship but it's lost now too, or it wouldn't be here) and then Nephew's hands are on either side of her head, _inside_ her head, and she can feel Herself - herself - shedoesn'tknow - starting to disappear.

(Here's the funny thing. How do you know you're going mad? How do you know you're being erased, line by line, like a poem in an inconsolable inadequate poet's hand? The answer is, of course, you can't. Because they always erase the part of you that _could_ figure out you're fading first. It takes your ability to recognize yourself as alive before it takes your life. It's a funny way of dying, like that.)

She realizes it suddenly, as all the emotion hits her at once - the green-glow-House retreating out of her mind before it burns in the blaze of artron gold, a part of her decides- and she chokes it out, can't seem to help it. "I'm _scared_ \- "

"I expect so, dearie," Auntie says comfortably. "But soon you'll have a new soul. There'll be a Time Lord coming."

A Time Lord. She knows what that means, trying to turn and not making it. A Time Lord and he is, she is, they are Last, which means the puppet-woman must mean _Her_ Time Lords - _Her_ Thief, _Her_ Rose, and She will not allow House-Timeship-Eater to take Her pilots Her - (and the connection jitters and shudders and breaks again)

Idris (that is her name is that her name) doesn't even have time to scream.

The last thing she hears[feels]sees is silence: an emptiness in her head so vast and so devastating and so sheerly _terrible_ it swallows everything up - and behind it She is shrieking nonlinear forever-and-always into thin time - and everything shifts _left_ and she, the small her, the lost her, is gone as quick as shattered glass.

[=|=]

"Everything we've seen and done," Amy starts, "and you're struggling with fat farting aliens that dissolve in vinegar?"

Rory just shakes his head. He opens his mouth to speak, but before he gets past the first word he's cut off by a knock at the door. "Wait," he says instead, blinking.

_Knock knock knock-knock-knock-knock_

"What was that," Amy asks, turning to look at the door.

"A knock," the Doctor says after a moment. "At the door."

"Er," Rory interjects, "we're in deep space."

"Very deep space," the Doctor agrees. "And somebody's knocking."

Arkytior hesitates only a second before moving to the door, resting her hand on the door and glancing back over her shoulder at the Doctor. He gives her a slight nod.

Outside the doors, floating in space, is a tiny glowing cube.

"Oh, come here," the Doctor breathes, grinning. "You scrumptious little beauty."

"It's a box," Rory says slowly.

"A hypercube," Arkytior corrects him. "But-how?"

"Good question," the Doctor answers as the hypercube bumps into his chest.

"Doctor, what is it?" Amy frowns, steps closer, as Arkytior closes the doors.

"Time Lord emergency messaging system," he explains, beaming. "In an emergency, we'd wrap up thoughts in psychic containers and send them through Time and space. Anyway, there's a living Time Lord still out there, and it's one of the good ones."

He reaches out, takes Arkytior's hand, and she can feel the hope blooming, painful and fragile and desperate, and she doesn't have the strength to dampen it. So she hides her suspicions, squeezes his hand and gives him a bright-eager smile, because even with her worries there's a chance they're not _alone_ anymore, and she wants the hivemind-hum back so badly it hurts.

"But you said there were no Time Lords left," Rory tries, confused.

[help me] the hypercube whispers. [help me. please help me]

"There are no Time Lords left in the _universe_ ," the Doctor answers, grin widening. He drops Arkytior's hand, spins around the console. "But the universe isn't where we're going. Arkytior, a hand?"

She reaches out, flips a lever and presses a few buttons, the TARDIS shuddering violently.

"See that snake?" the Doctor continues, looking over at Amy and Rory with a manic grin. He's referring to the Ouroboros mark on the side of the hypercube, the engraving Arkytior barely caught a glimpse of. "That's the mark of the Corsair. Fantastic bloke. He had that snake tattooed on his arm in every regeneration. Didn't feel like himself unless he had that tattoo. Or herself, a couple times." He smirks wickedly. "Ooooh, she was a _bad_ girl."

The Corsair. It's an unfamiliar name, another renegade Time Lord the Doctor once knew. Another memory she can never share. There are so, so many of those-and even now it hurts, thinking of all the lonely silent centuries, when he ran and she only dreamed. How different would she be-would he be-had she gathered the courage to take her TARDIS and fly far, far away?

There's a small explosion and a shower of sparks, interrupting the train of thought, and Arkytior hurries to try and stabilize the ship. She knows what the Doctor's trying to do, and without Gallifrey it's _insane_ -there was a _reason_ , after all, that he couldn't come get her from Pete's World after Canary Wharf.

"What's _happening?_ " Rory exclaims, clinging to the railing for dear life.

"We are about to leave the universe," Arkytior answers, grabbing the edge of the console with one hand and desperately holding a dial steady with the other.

"How can you leave the _universe_?" Amy shouts.

"With enormous difficulty!" The Doctor whoops. "I'm burning up TARDIS rooms to give us extra power. Goodbye, swimming pool! Goodbye, scullery! Sayonara, squash court seven!"

He beams, a wild and maniacal grin directed at Arkytior, and then there's a shudder and a _jerk_ and she can feel the world-walls cracking - (a familiar feeling, in a strange kind of way; she's broken through universes before) - sparks glow in time-sight vision and twist and _flare._

She registers a distant crash, reverberating through the steel floor, and then everything goes silent.

Utterly still.

Utterly motionless.

Amy's the first to move, shifting her weight back and forth, uncertain. "...Where are we?" she whispers. (It's the kind of moment that needs a whisper.)

"Outside the universe," the Doctor answers, voice hushed and half-reverent, an aura of painful bloody [hope] radiating outward. "Where we've never, _ever_ been."

That's when things go wrong.

They have barely a second to absorb that information, and then the TARDIS lights abruptly die - everything going dark - fading away in careful calibrated layers. Lights, then console, then the distinctive timeship gold-glow that emanates from everywhere and nowhere all at once; and, finally, the time rotor's light fades away, leaving them frozen in the silver-green light from the doors.

"Er," Rory starts, "is that meant to be happening?"

Arkytior's staring up at the point where the central column meets the ceiling, eyes wide, mind open - listening, in more ways than one. There's no flicker of energy anywhere. She can't even feel the usually-omnipresent telepathic presence of the TARDIS in the back of her head anymore. "The power's draining," she starts slowly, mostly stalling - "has drained. It's gone. All of it. As if - " as if the TARDIS has been hurt so badly She's gone dormant, or as if the timeship matrix, Her soul, is - gone. She glances at the Doctor, suddenly worried, but he's still breathing. "But that's - well, nothing can be ruled out, but that's not really possible." It sounds like a question.

The Doctor looks up suddenly. "Strange," is all he says.

She frowns, uncertain. If the TARDIS really were gone - well, they were the last two Gallifreyan beings in existence for a long time, and together for centuries before that. She remembers losing her own timeship - doesn't think she ever could forget - and she knows enough that even he couldn't hide _that_ kind of pain. Not from her. "Are you….?  
He gives her a puzzled look; it's disconcertingly sincere. "Of course I'm okay." The grin snaps back onto his face with an almost-audible click, and if there's a trace of denial under all the raw new _hope_ it's hidden fast. "Well? What are we waiting for? We have a Time Lord to find!"

He darts out the doors first; Amy and Rory follow, the Dreamer casting an uncertain look back at the darkened rotors before closing the doors.

They're in some kind of junkyard, dark and old and with a strangely forlorn air about it all, near the wreckage of a large spaceship. "So what kind of trouble's your friend in?" Amy asks after a moment of silent walking.

"Well, he's in a pickle. Sort of _distressed_ ," the Doctor says vaguely, and Arkytior rolls her eyes.

"We don't know, the message didn't specify."

"But what _is_ this place?" Rory asks, looking around. "The scrapyard at the end of the universe?"

"Not the end. Outside of," the Doctor corrects with an almost smug grin.

"How can we be _outside_ the universe? The universe is _everything_." Rory says.

The Doctor rolls his eyes. "Imagine a great big soap bubble with a tiny little soap bubble stuck to the outside."

"Okay."

"Well, it's nothing like that." He frowns, staring back at the TARDIS. "Completely drained. Look at Her."

"So…" Amy says after a moment. "Since you're not going to explain any more, we're in a tiny bubble universe, sticking to the side of the bigger bubble universe?"

"Yeah. No," the Doctor corrects, shaking his head. "But if it helps, yes. This place is full of rift energy-She'll probably refuel just by being here."

Arkytior considers mentioning that She has to be _inside_ the box to refuel, but decides it's not a good idea with Amy and Rory so near. "Gravity's almost Earth normal," she points out instead, bouncing a little on her toes. "And the air is breathable-obviously, or we wouldn't be standing here. Is it just me, or does it smell like…"

"Armpits," Amy says confidently.

The Doctor nods agreement. "Armpits."

"But what about all this stuff?" Rory asks, gesturing at the wrecked spaceship and other miscellaneous bits scattered around. "Where did it all come from?"

"Well," the Doctor starts, "there's a rift. Now and then stuff gets sucked through it. Not a bubble, a plughole. This universe has a plughole and we've just fallen through it."

"Like Cardiff," Arkytior muses. She opens her mouth to continue, but a sudden shout cuts her off.

"Thief! Thief! You're my Thief!" a dark-haired woman in a patchwork blue gown shouts, running up to them. "And you! My- Oh, _look_ at you! Goodbye. No, not goodbye, what's the other one?"

And before anyone can get a word in, the woman sweeps forward, grasps Arkytior's face in her hands, and snogs her thoroughly.

There's a second of stunned silence before the Doctor murmurs, "I'm the only one allowed to snog her."

"Watch out," a man says in a thick, slow voice. "Careful, keep back from her. Welcome, strangers. Lovely. Sorry about the mad person."

"Why am I a thief? What have I stolen?" the Doctor finally asks.

"Me!" the woman proclaims cheerfully. "You're going to steal me. No, you have stolen me. Are stealing me? Oh, tenses are difficult, aren't they." She beams at Arkytior. "And he is stealing you, too, isn't he? Our silly Thief. Does he know me?"

"Oh, we _are_ sorry, my doves," a different woman says, the same slow-syrup tone to her voice as the man has. "She's off her head. They call me Auntie."

"And I'm Uncle. I'm everybody's Uncle," the man says.

"Not mine," Arkytior mumbles, almost sarcastically. The Doctor snorts.

"Just keep back from this one," Uncle continues, oblivious. "She bites."

"Do I?" The woman grins brightly. "Excellent!"

Arkytior thinks she knows what's about to happen and considers intervening, but there's something strangely _familiar_ about the crazy-seeming woman, and, well, it's bound to be quite amusing.

She surges forward, laughing, and bites the Doctor on the ear. He yelps, flies backwards, waving his arms about frantically. "Ow! Oww."

"Biting's excellent!" the woman beams. "It's like kissing, only there's a winner."

Arkytior giggles.

"So sorry," Uncle says. "She's _doolally_."

The woman gives Arkytior a warm, bright look, then shakes her head. "No, I'm not doolally. I'm-I'm-it's on the tip of my tongue." She suddenly grins. "I've just had a new idea about kissing! Come here, you."

Whether she's reaching for Arkytior or the Doctor isn't quite clear, but Rory looks vaguely scandalized by it all while Amy's simply calculating.

"No, Idris, _no_ ," Auntie says heavily, giving the Doctor an apologetic glance.

"Oh, but now you're _angry_ ," Idris says abruptly, staring at the Doctor with a strange intensity. Then she frowns. "No, you're not. You _will be_ angry. The little boxes will make you angry."

She says this with an air of absolute certainty, as though the Doctor's anger has already happened, as though there's no chance of him _not_ being angry.

"Sorry?" he tries, confused and a little bit not-quite-afraid; she's the only one who can see that last part, he's really exceptionally good at lying. "The little what? _Boxes_?"

"Your chin is hilarious," Idris says, nodding. "It means the smell of dust after rain."

"What does?" Rory asks, finally daring to enter the conversation.

Idris spins, beams at him. "Petrichor."

Rory blinks. "But. I didn't ask?"

"Not yet. But you will."

"No, no, Idris. I think you should have a rest," Auntie interjects, sweet-soft-slow.

"Rest?" Idris tilts her head to one side, considers this. "Yes, yes. Good idea. I'll just see if there's an off switch."

Less than a second later, she collapses.

"Is that it?" Uncle asks over a moment. "She's dead now. So sad."

"She's still breathing," Rory corrects, frowning.

"Nephew, take Idris somewhere she cannot bite people," Uncle orders, then.

Arkytior looks around and that's when she catches sight of the Ood. She stiffens, hardly dares to breathe-but its eyes are _green_ , not red, not possessed-deadly-dangerous, and she slowly lets her muscles relax, consciously slows her heartsbeats.

"Oh, hello!" the Doctor says.

"Doctor," Amy says warily, "what _is_ that?"

"It's an Ood," he answers with a grin. "Oods are good. Love an Ood. Hello, Ood. Can't you talk?"

The Ood, Nephew, shakes its-his?- _eir_ head, lifts up the translator ball.

"Ohhh, I see," the Doctor answers. "It's damaged. May I? It might just be on the wrong frequency."

"Nephew was broken when he came here. Why, he was half-dead," Auntie supplies. "House repaired him. House repairs _all_ of us."

The Doctor frowns slightly, but doesn't say anything, reaches for the translator instead - a movement too fast for human eyes to properly follow, and a twist, and a click -

And there are _voices._

Arkytior recognizes it instantly, automatically; a signal across every known spectrum and every known dimension, telepathic as well as time-active as well as simple sound - meant to reach everything and everyone, and _familiar_ in the way only one thing could be -

A hybercube.

No. No. Not just another hybercube; hundreds, maybe more, signals layered over each other. Melding into a kind of ambient hum which _isn't_ the hivemind [youarenotalone] but it is oh-so-close, _almost_ filling the gap -

Her mind shies away from the sheer _volume_ of it automatically, focusing on one message, not willing to deal with all of them at once. "If you are receiving this, _please_ help me," it crackles, layered with [uncertainty] and [arrogance] and [fear]. "Send a signal to the High Council of the Time Lords of Gallifrey. Tell them that I am still alive. I don't know where I am. I'm on some rock-like planet."

Arkytior freezes. So does the Doctor, going completely still, silent and tense and strung almost tight enough to snap. She reaches out instinctively, finds his hand and squeezes, and-

[anger-horror-fear-desperation-hope] and then he slams his shields down and shuts her out.

"What was that?" Rory asks. "Was that him?"

Arkytior shakes her head. "Oh, no," she murmurs thickly. "It's picking up something else. Lots of somethings."

"But that's-that's not _possible_ ," the Doctor exclaims suddenly. "That's. That's. Who else is here? Tell me. Show me. _Show me_."

Auntie shakes her head. "Just what you see. Just the four of us, and the House. Nephew, will you take Idris somewhere safe where she can't hurt nobody?"

"What's the House?" Arkytior asks quietly, still reeling from the hypercube projections.

"House is all around you, my sweets," Auntie says gently. "You are _standing_ on him. This is the House. This _world_. Would you like to meet him?"

Rory blinks. "Meet him?"

"I'd _love_ to." The Doctor meets Auntie's eyes.

"This way," Uncle says. "Come, please. Come."

[=|=]

The asteroid is sentient.

 _Of course_ the asteroid is sentient, Arkytior muses almost bitterly. And the Doctor, the Doctor is acting _wrong_ -weird and cold and angry and _afraid_ , hidden beneath a cheerful mask. A very familiar mask (and what does it say about him-and them-that the mask is almost _more_ familiar than the reality beneath?).

Auntie turns back to them, grinning. "We walk on his back, breathe his air, eat his food-"

"Smell his armpits," Amy mutters.

"And do my will," a deep voice finishes, echoing through Auntie and Uncle's mouths, the two of them frozen upright like marionettes with their strings pulled taught. "You are _most_ welcome, travellers."

The two humans in the room jump; Arkytior only goes still. (And the Doctor doesn't react at all, very nearly resigned.) There's an edge of [humor] in the air - which is when she pinpoints that hum in the ambient telepathic environment, traces it down below their feet, to the laughing green-glow that is House itself.

Amy takes a breath, slightly shaky. "That voice. That's the asteroid talking?"

Arkytior nods, preoccupied "Yes. The House." Her eyes are unfocused; staring at something the humans can't see. "It makes sense, if you think about it."

"So you're like a sea urchin," the Doctor supplies, upbeat and undiscouraged. "Hard outer surface, that's what we're walking on. Big, squashy, oogly thing inside, that's you."

"That is correct, Time Lord," House hums, and still that edge of sardonic sarcasm about it's voice; not quite mockery, not yet, but too close.

Arkytior's eyes narrow as she processes that, suddenly snapping back into normal space. "You've met Time Lords before." She reaches out just a little further, _listens,_ trying to get a good look at it: half-curious [welcoming] and cheerful good humour and far beneath a deeply malevolent [hunger].

She yanks her mind back behind her shields, instinctive, fearful. No, she can't - that can't be right. Is she imagining things now?

House is speaking. "Many travellers have come through the rift, as did Auntie and Uncle and Nephew." (Not Idris, a part of her notes, distant. No mention of the wild-but-familiar woman.) "I repair them when they break."

"So there are Time Lords here, then?" The Doctor doesn't give anything away, his voice still that same shade of cheerful curiosity, but that same raw bloody [hope] flares through the bond.

She wonders, for a moment, if he can feel the hunger - and then clamps it down, because it can't have been real, because she heard the hivemind-echo too. And besides, if she takes away that hope from him now - she glances at him sidelong, bites her tongue hard - he's too vulnerable right now, and too close to breaking. She doesn't dare.

"Not anymore," House says, almost regretfully, "but there have been many TARDISes on my back in days gone by."

Many TARDISes. Not Time Lords.

Arkytior feels like that should _mean_ something, but she's not quite sure what. Almost asks the Doctor if he does, but his side of the bond's gone - quiet, suspiciously so, too close to silence, he only goes that quiet when he's keeping something from her. Except he's being obvious about it this time, which means he can't be, or maybe it's a double-bluff -

Why is she even thinking about this? It doesn't matter. She _trusts_ him.

(The astronaut shoots once and twice and then he falls and there is no gold and _you must not interfere -_ )

"Well, there won't be any others after us," the Doctor says brusquely, casually. "Last Time Lords. Last TARDIS."

"A pity." House's voice is sadly conciliatory, full of thick sincere sympathy. "Your people were so kind. Be here in safety, Doctor, Dreamer. Rest, feed if you will."

"We're… not _actually_ going to stay here, are we?" Rory asks nervously.

"Well, it seems like a friendly planet. Literally," the Doctor answers with a grin. He directs his next words to Auntie, whose mind House has apparently left again. "Mind if we poke around a bit?"

"You can look all you want," Auntie answers. "Go. Look." She reaches out and ever-so-softly caresses a lock of Amy's red hair. "House _likes_ you."

Amy jerks backward, something distinctly uncomfortable in her eyes, doesn't speak.

"Come on, gang," the Doctor says quickly. "We're just going to, er, see the sights."

He darts off down a corridor with his usual enthusiasm, dragging Amy and Rory in his wake; Arkytior follows slower, more careful, throwing a wary glance back at Auntie and Uncle. The Doctor's side of the bond is still far too quiet.

She catches up with them somewhere in the patchwork tunnels, just as Rory's finally gathered the courage to speak. "So as soon as the TARDIS is refuelled, we'll go?"

"No," the Doctor answers easily. "There are other Time Lords here. I heard them and they need me-us," he corrects quickly.

"You two told me about your people," Amy says, after a moment. "I mean - what you did."

"Yes, yes," he says impatiently, "but they're here _now,_ I can feel it. Doesn't matter how, doesn't matter how impossible it should be, somebody somehow survived the Time War - we're not going to _leave._ "

Arkytior takes a sharp breath - tries to catch Amy's eye, shake her head at the woman, signal _don't push it._ The Warrior's too close under the skin too fast, dangerous and sharp enough that part of her wonders if the TARDIS _did_ get hurt - but no. She'd have felt that too. And Amy deliberately avoids her eyes. "And then tell them you destroyed the others?"

The Doctor stops without warning, spins around, Rory stumbling forward past him. Amy makes an indistinct surprised noise and stops just before she walks into him, trying to get her dignity back long enough to stare him in the eyes. His eyes are dark, but his voice is kind, the vulnerability of it well-hidden. "I can explain. I'll have to - I _had_ to, they'll - understand that."

Amy hesitates for a moment, and then a soft kind of smile crosses her face."You want to be forgiven."

He holds her gaze - not staring her down, just holding her down, except it's _her_ who's advancing on him now. Arkytior's on hair-trigger edge, not sure what she's scared of but her heartsbeat loud in her ears anyway. And just when she thinks one of them's about to snap -

He looks away.

"Oh, Amy Pond." It's nearly a whisper. Regretful, but not painful, not giving anything away. "Don't we all?"

And then he looks up, sudden, and his eyes are bright again. "Right. Anyway. Things to do. Amy?"

She doesn't hesitate. "What do you need?"

"My screwdriver," he answers, grins a little sheepishly, waving his hands. "I, er, left it in the TARDIS. It's in my jacket."

Amy narrows her eyes, somewhere between amusement and confusion. "You're wearing your jacket."

"My _other_ jacket," he explains patiently.

Rory pipes up for the first time, sounding genuinely astonished. "You have two jackets?"

Amy elbows him in the ribs. "Doesn't the Dreamer have a sonic?"

"I need a setting hers doesn't have."

"Okay, I'll get it," Amy says, bounces experimentally in the not-quite-earth-gravity, points a finger in the vague direction of Arkytior. "Don't let him get emotional, okay? That's when he makes mistakes."

She tosses him her mobile, and the Doctor grins. "Yes, ma'am."

"Rory, take care of them." And then she's gone.

Rory glances after his wife, and then at the two aliens, and looks a bit torn. "Er.."

"Rory, look after her," the Doctor supplies helpfully

"...Yeah," he mumbles, and hurries after his wife, sending one last glance over his shoulder.

"Come on." The Doctor walks on without a backward glance.

[=|=]

The Doctor answers the mobile fast and easy, still casual. Listens for a moment. "Yeah, it's around there somewhere. Have a good look." Arkytior only watches as he reaches into his jacket, pulls out his sonic, activating a feature she can't identify from here. "No, it's got to be, look again. Yup. Exactly."

The sonic clicks. Arkytior catches a half-surprised squawk from the phone before he hangs up, keeps walking. And still so, so very _quiet._

"What did you do?" she asks, after a moment. Soft.

"Remote locked the TARDIS doors," he explains shortly. And frowns, spinning in place. "They're close. I can - can you feel it?" He's staring at the blank corrugated-steel sky, and then the silence slowly fades, pulsing with that same hard broken [hope] and a harder [denial] -

She swallows.

She lowers her shields.

She hears it.

And then she knows, knows what she'll find before she pulls the curtain back. "They couldn't fit," she hears herself say, staring at the alcove, but it's too late, it's far too late.

The die are cast. And any moment now he'll realize it too, and then the world will have to wait and see if it breaks him

He steps inside slowly, one foot after the other. Faint, indistinct voices just on the edge of hearing emanate from the very back of the alcove, and Arkytior leans in, tries to catch the words. It's him who opens the cabinet, fingers colder than the metal, eyes utterly unreadably, to reveal dozens and dozens of -

Hybercubes.

Amplified, and spectrum-boosted, somehow _widened,_ but still only hybercubes. "Please do you read me," a male voice babbles, and [anxious] and [fear,] recorded voices of the long-dead, and [panic] and "Structural integrity failure. Damage to dimensional stabilizer."

But she's still watching the Doctor, trying to figure out which way he'll jump.

Auntie and Uncle are behind them; she turns before she realizes that she didn't even fell them approach (the noise of the hybercubes, or something more?) And then she realizes she's turned her back on what might or might not currently be the Warrior, and tries not to flinch -

but it's the Doctor's voice that echoes back over her head, the Doctor cold and ice-cracked angry and full of more snarled emotion that can be easily comprehended, but still the Doctor. "Just admiring your Time Lord distress signal collection," he says, and his voice is _almost_ normal but there's a tone, a cadence, to it that doesn't belong, too fluidly rigid and blankly emotionless and cold. "Nice job. _Brilliant_ job. Really thought I had some friends here, but this is what the Ood translator picked up. Cries for help from the long dead. How many Time Lords have you lured here the way you lured me - and don't you wonder what _happened_ to them all, _why_ they're all screaming?"

"House," Auntie says in her shaky frail voice. "House is kind and he is wise-"

"House repairs you when you break _I know_ ," the Doctor snaps, and his voice cracks like a whip, snarls with white-cold fury and edged with broken glass. "But _how_ does he mend you?" He pulls his sonic out, steps past the Dreamer in a single fluid motion, scans Uncle's face. "You have the eyes of a twenty-year-old."

"Thank you," Uncle says, beaming.

"No. Oh, _no._ " The Doctor smiles, a meaningless razor-sharp thing. "I mean it literally. Your eyes are thirty years younger than the rest of you. Your ears don't match, your right arm is two inches longer than your left, and how's your dancing? Because you've got two left feet. _Patchwork people_. You've been repaired and patched up so often, I doubt there's anything left of what used to be you." He shifts, cocks his head, suddenly almost conversational: "I had an umbrella like you once."

Auntie shifts nervously, and Arkytior notices the tattoo on her arm just as the Doctor does. The Ouroboros. The patchwork woman catches their gaze and grins. "Oh, now, it's been a great arm for me, this."

"The Corsair," the Doctor bites out.

"He was a _strapping_ big bloke, wasn't he, Uncle?"

"Big fellow," Uncle agrees, nodding.

"I got the arm and then Uncle got the spine. And the kidneys," Auntie beams.

"Kidneys," Uncle hums.

The Doctor sighs, dusty-dark, and the way he stands gives an impression of _predator._ On the hunt. "Auntie. Uncle. Nephew. House. You really don't know much at all, do you?You gave me _hope_."

If House hears the broken furious clarity of that last word, it doesn't react, doesn't show it.

"And then," says the Doctor, simple, clean, cold. "And then you took it away _._ That's enough to make _anyone_ dangerous." An agonizing barely-there pause, and then it's a snarl again, and for a moment Arkytior thinks she can hear the hiss-and-whine of anti-time under it. "God knows what it will do to _me._ Basically," climbing into a roar - " _run._ "

But they don't.

They stand there, ragtag clockwork people, eyes blank, heads tilted at an angle that's viscerally and distinctly _not human._ It's Auntie who does move, pulling Uncle away slowly, smiling pityingly. "Poor old Time Lords," she hums. "It's too late. House is too clever."

And then they're gone, and Arkytior is left alone with a man she hardly recognizes and the agonizing echoes of [[youarenotalone]] and everything that once was hers, so close but just out of reach, and she stands there pale and silent and waiting but inside she's screaming.


	9. The Doctor's Wife--Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very sorry for the long wait. I intended to finish the episode in this chapter, but I'm having some issues with writing it and so I figured I should just post what I have. Part of this chapter was still cowritten with anarchitect. Due to circumstances, we are no longer writing together; if the writing quality drops, that's why. Thank you all for your patience.

The Doctor’s Wife--Part Two

“He’s a lying little bastard is what he is,” Amy announces, leaning against the console with her arms stubbornly crossed. Rory looks up - still elbow-deep in the Doctor’s pockets - and gives her a vaguely horrified look at the language; she raises one eyebrow and he shuts up.  “There’s no sonic screwdriver! Anywhere!”

“Well - “ says Rory, but she’s already reaching for the console phone, dialing her own number. It rings once, twice; clicks. 

“No sonic screwdriver,” she repeats, before the Doctor can get out a hello. “And the doors seem to have locked behind us. Rory thinks there’s a perfectly innocent explanation, but  _ I  _ think you lied to us. Am I right?”

There’s a pause that’s just slightly too long, and then he answers, his voice casual but cold. An inflection she recognizes. “Time Lord stuff. Needed you out of the way.”

She knows this is illogical, that she shouldn’t be angry, that she shouldn’t snap at him when he’s emotional, but she can’t help herself. “What, we’re not good enough for your smart new friends?”

There’s another subtly too-long pause. “The boxes will make you angry.” He doesn’t sound like he’s listening, distant, dull, realizing.. “How did she know?”

She’s starting to get worried. “Doctor, what are you talking about?”

“Stay put. Stay exactly where you are.”

“We don’t have much--choice…” she starts, and then the call cuts off with a click. 

She stares at the phone for a minute, drops it on the console, looks at Rory. 

“He’s not trusting us and he’s being emotional,” she tells him, vaguely nervous.“This is bad. This is very bad.”

“Yeah,” Rory starts nervously, swallowing. “I think it really is.”

Amy turns and sees the strange green-gas glow in the windows and swears, ignoring Rory’s half-shocked gasp behind her. “Sometimes, I hate being right…”

[=|=]

The phone breaks the silence with the blithe ignorance of nonsentient technology; the ring strange and smooth in the alien environment. The Doctor picks it up without quite seeming to think, the first movement he’s made since Auntie and Uncle disappeared. 

And then he’s moving, strolling forward, flipping the sonic screwdriver in his left hand; she follows him. Listens to the tinny annoyance of Amy’s voice on the other end. And then he stops. 

Sudden. Without warning. 

She swallows, not sure if it’s the right name, or the right word. “Doctor?” 

He turns very slowly, eyes unfocused, staring into the distance. “The boxes will make you angry. How did she know?”

“The boxes will make you angry?” she repeats, confused. 

He focuses on her sharp and clean, and there’s no more danger in his eyes, the phone drifting away forgotten. Now there’s just wonder, and an edge of fear. “The boxes will make you angry. That’s what she said. The - the bitey mad lady, the one who kissed you,  _ Idris. _ Arkytior,  _ how did she know? _ ” 

“I don’t - “ 

“Arkytior,” he repeats, and the [fear] radiates off him now, and she reaches for his hands but he doesn’t seem to notice. “Arkytior, can you feel the TARDIS?”

She doesn’t know what to do. She closes her eyes and reaches, stretching to find the familiar blue-box presence at the back of her head - 

And hits only silence, a gaping empty wound, edges sharp as broken glass; a black hole dragging her down into the  _ depths  _ and she nearly screams, pulled in, drowning in  _ green _ \- 

And then the Doctor has her hands, pulling her out easily, a warm swirl of blue-and-silver; she staggers where she stands, stays upright but only barely. And oh, Rassilon, that can’t have been there before; that must be recent. That must have - happened slowly, or she’d have noticed. And he - she’s connected to the TARDIS, just because She’s all that’s left of Gallifrey, because they’re all connected now, but She’s still his timeship. He has the black hole in his head. 

And his hands don’t even shake. 

[not hiding,] he signals, hands in hers, blue-and-silver and pink-and-yellow. There’s a raw kind of honest to it. [not healing. she just keeps fading, arkytior, and i - ] 

He cuts himself off. 

[how did she  _ know _ ?]

And then he’s running.

[=|=] 

The Idris woman is in her cell, where she should be. Curled up against the wall, rocking back and forth, holding herself together. Arkytior thinks she might be singing something, but she stops too quickly too be sure, looks up with a childlike kind of wary curiosity as the Doctor crashes in into the jigsaw-puzzle room. 

And then her face brightens; enthusiastically, unashamedly happy, all the hidden pain in that look swept away instantly, bouncing forward to lean against the bars. Her voice, when it comes, is a sweet delighted purr. “Ah, it’s my Thief.”

The Doctor’s still holding Arkytior’s hand, pulling her forward. “Who are you?” 

“It’s about time,” says Idris, and sniffs mock-disgustedly. She pokes her nose through the bars to stare at Arkytior, gives her a friendly little wave. “You were here too! I forget. Forgot. Am forgetting? Hello, Rose.”

The Doctor take a short sharp breath; Arkytior startles, a little shocked - by how  _ familiar  _ it is more than anything else, the cadence of it, the sharp silver tint of the words. She’s met the woman before. 

“I don’t understand,” is all she can manage. “Who are you?”

Idris frowns, tilts her head. “Do you not know me? Just because they put me in here?” 

The Doctor inches forward, something like a kind of [fascination] edging through his fingers; she pulls on his hands, trying to keep him back. “They said you were  _ dangerous. _ ” It’s as much a reminder as an answer. 

Idris’s eyes widen, sudden -  _ hurt.  _ “Not the cage, stupid. In here.” And then her voice cracks, her hands climbing up to her head, rocking back on her heels. It sounds like indignation, like delirious disbelief, like  _ pain.  _ “They put me. In  _ here _ .” 

And then she breaks off, makes a frustrated noise, hanging against the bars again. “Oh, what do you call me? I’m the - We travel. I go - “

And then she opens her mouth and glows  _ gold -  _

(in every dimension, every layer of reality except the physical, except the immediate - the Wolf’s color, the Vortex’s color, the color of _ time. _ ) 

_ Vworp. Vworp. Vworp. _

Arkytior’s hands fly up to her mouth,the Doctor’s fingers slipping out of hers, and then he’s stepping forward - entranced.

“You’re the TARDIS,” he says disbelievingly, and his voice is incredulous, but it’s a game - a game they’ve been playing ever since She stole him and he stole Her and they went off running. (Without Arkytior.). “ _ My  _ TARDIS.”

“Time-And-Relative-Dimension-In-Space.  _ Yes  _ that’s it.” It’s like a switch has been flipped, a button pressed, Idris’s face lighting up with joyful innocent  _ love _ . “ Names _ are _ funny. It’s me. I’m the TARDIS.”

“No, you’re not,” he decides, shaking his head, dismissive. “You’re a bitey mad lady. The TARDIS is up-and-downey stuff in a big blue box.”

“Yes, that’s me,”  Idris says, immediate, eager. “A Type Forty TARDIS. I was already a museum piece when  _ you  _ were young,” she hums, head tilting, smile beatific, “and the first time you touched my console you said - “ 

Arkytior can feel it, almost jumps from the force of it, Panopticon protocol freezing her down the way it always does - a telepathic shock, a spark dancing blue-and-silver in the air, a connection. An understanding, maybe.   
“...I said you were the most beautiful thing I ever saw.”

“And then you stole me,” Idris - the  _ TARDIS -  _ says matter-of-factly. “And  _ I  _ stole you.”

“I  _ borrowed _ you,” he corrects absently, his tone vaguely offended but his eyes blank with the realization, focusing on further-away things - his voice soft and almost vulnerable.

“Borrowing implies the intention to return the thing that was taken.” Idris smirks, leaning against the bars. “What makes you think I would  _ ever _ give you back?”

“You’re the TARDIS,” the Doctor confirms, that same bloody broken hope coming back into his voice. Not a question, no, but not  _ quite _ a statement, either; there’s a hint of insecurity there, the fear that it’s all just an elaborate facade about to crumble beneath his feet. Arkytior wants to reach out, to smooth the worry away, but she doesn’t think she can; not now. 

“Yes.” It’s simple; it’s true. 

“ _ My _ TARDIS.”

“My Doctor,” the TARDIS returns playfully, and their eyes lock, something passing between them that Arkytior can’t see. 

And then She steps back, hands up, mouth open in exaggerated surprise. “Oh! We have now reached the point in the conversation where you open the lock.”

He doesn’t hesitate, pulling the sonic out of his jacket in one smooth movement, the lock clicking open easily. Idris, or the TARDIS, or whoever the woman really is, steps out as ladylike as the ruffles of her dress imply, barefoot in the dust and beaming like sunlight. 

They spin - dark eyes meeting darker, the smiles gone now, Arkytior apparently forgotten. She recognizes it anyway. It’s the dance of planets, of suns, of galaxies in love and falling apart for it; ancient and beautiful and very very slow. 

A recognition. 

“Are all people like this?” the TARDIS asks, soft-edged, still staring. 

“Like what?” 

“So much - “ A hesitation, a pause, the tiniest of tilts. “Bigger on the inside. I’m - “ 

And then She breaks off, annoyance clear on her face, looking for something that won’t come. “Oh, what  _ is  _ that word? It’s so big, so complicated.” Her eyes widen, suddenly grief-stricken, staring into the nothing. “And so sad.”

And then her eyes focus on Arkytior. 

The grief vanishes in an instant, replaced by a loopy grin almost as silly as the Doctor on his best days, a little bit insane but in a good way. “Hello, Dreamer.”

Arkytior blinks, taken aback. “Hello?” 

“I know you,” the other woman says proudly. “You were me once. For a while. It was nice, wasn’t it?”  

And suddenly the woman’s eyes glow, a familiar spark in her eyes, a fire bright enough to cut through reality – golden eyes meeting green – and Arkytior opens her mouth, closes it, suddenly breathless. (The heart of the TARDIS, and the chronoform power held therein, and suddenly her bones  **_burn_ ** with power - )

“My Rose,” the TARDIS purrs, smile sweet and knowing. “My Dreamer.  _ My _ Rose.”

Arkytior shakes her head, pulls her gaze away, trying to unlock the respiratory bypass in her throat. There are things to do, problems to address, the green-glow of House below them – House. It must have been House who did it. “But why?” When she raises her head, her eyes are sharp and icy and focused. “Why pull the living soul from a timeship and put it into a mortal mind, a  _ linear  _ mind? What does House  _ want? _ ”

The TARDIS doesn’t even hesitate, shrugs, easy. “It doesn’t want me.”

Arkytior blinks. “How do you know?”

“House eats timeships.”

There’s a moment pf silence; Arkytior’s eyes flicker over to the Doctor’s, but he’s just as confused. “What?”

“ _ I _ don’t know,” the TARDIS announces airily, “it’s something I heard him say,” and she nods toward the Doctor, who looks even more confused.

“When?” he asks, helpless.

“In the future,” says the TARDIS promptly, with a tone that implies  _ obviously. _

“…House eats timeships?”

“There you go. What  _ are  _ fish fingers?”

“When do I say that?” the Doctor asks suspiciously.

She gives him an affectionate look, pats his head lovingly. He looks even more confused. “You don’t, silly.”

“Oh,” and it’s Arkytior, straightening, calculations buzzing in her eyes. “Oh – House feeds on rift energy, and timeships are  _ full  _ of rift energy, they’re  _ made  _ of it. And not raw-wild, but lovely and organized. Processed food. Fish fingers,” she declares, triumphant, the solution there. “Perfect.”

“Do fish have fingers?”

“But you can’t  _ eat  _ a TARDIS,” the Doctor protests. “It would destroy you – the defense protocols – “

“Unless you deleted the TARDIS Matrix,” Arkytior breathes.

“But House can’t just  _ delete _ a TARDIS’s consciousness,” the TARDIS supplies helpfully, talking at a hundred miles per hour, working it out faster than either of her pilots. “That would blow a hole in the  _ universe _ . And I’m the last, of course, so right now I’m all that’s keeping reality together, not that House knows that. So he pulls out the Matrix, sticks it in a living receptacle, and then he feeds off the remaining artron energy.” She pauses, then frowns absently, looking at something nobody else can see. “Oh. You were about to say all that.” The grin blooms bright and sunny. “I don’t suppose you have to now.”

And this time even Arkytior can’t help grinning back; the three of them, timeship and Time Lord, are golden. There’s no denying it. 

Which is just about when it hits.

“Amy and Rory,” she whispers. And then she’s straightening, her eyes wide - “They’re still in the - that’s not the  _ TARDIS  _ anymore, the TARDIS is  _ here -  _ “

The Doctor freezes, and then he’s fumbling for his mobile, moving so fast it almost disguises the way white shutters slam down behind his eyes, closing everything off. His voice is tight, controlled, but there’s real fear there too. “I sent them in there. They’ll be eaten.” He dials frantically, puts the phone to his ear, eyes rising up to meet Arkytior’s. “Amy, Rory, get the hell  _ out  _ of there.”

The pause is far too long. 

Amy’s voice crackles out of the phone, uncertain, far away. “Doctor, something’s wrong.”

The Doctor glances back at the thing wearing Idris’s body, and then down at the ground and the green-glow under it, and swears in distracted frantic Gallifreyan, and starts running. 

The TARDIS takes off first, darting off down the amalgam hallways after him, and it’s only halfway around the first corner that Arkytior realizes the linear-trapped timeship has grabbed her hand. “It’s House,” she hears the Doctor shout, and then the buzz of a sonic, and - “But I’ve  _ unlocked _ it,” frustrated, scared.

They stumble into the junkyard, past the massive hulking form of a spaceship’s corpse to the TARDIS - and She is - 

_ It  _ is, because the TARDIS is standing next to her straight and silent and sorrowful, like she’s grieving, like she  _ knows  _ what’s going to happen, because she does - 

_ It  _ is, because the blue box in front of her is just a block-transfer shell - but a block-transfer shell with all that’s left of the Eye of Harmony inside it, the last fragment of Gallifrey, the power of gods - 

_ It  _ is glowing a violent unreal sick shade of green. 

“Open!” the Doctor shouts, snapping his fingers, buzzing the sonic--but to no avail. “Open this door!” (The desperation clear in his voice now, but even there he holds back, even there she can see him fight the Warrior and  _ just  _ manage to hold it back, to not explode - ) 

(She understands something, right here, right now. They’ve found the TARDIS, but they haven’t found the  _ connection.  _ What the woman beside her and the Doctor have is an echo, no more, a pale simulacrum of the real thing. The pilot bond is gone as House is gone, and that means the Doctor is alone in his own head - alone with the silence, and all the grief and the guilt, alone with the Warrior - and she knows, too well, that it can’t be good.) 

(That he is so close to breaking.)

( _ And somewhere at the back of her head she is on the shores of Silencio, watching him fall, watching him fall, watching him fall, over and over and over and over again - ) _

She feels the scream trapped in her throat surge, and she can’t let it out so she  _ moves  _ instead. Fingers rush up to find the key tied  around her throat, struggling to fit it into the lock, the wind of the Vortex already kicking up around her. The cloister bell tolls a desperate warning, and she can’t keep the key steady, can already feel her fingers beginning to fade away - dematerialize - 

And then there’s a hand on her arm and the Doctor jerks her away, snapping the chain her key is on, before she disappears with it. She wobbles, thrown backwards, but he’s already turned away - and it’s Idris’s hands who catch her, the TARDIS’s hands that steady her, pull her upright. 

She glances back, shaken; the timeship’s eyes are gold with grief, and utterly helpless.

“Amy,” the Doctor is saying, his voice a hiss now, too close to the crackle of anti-time for comfort. “Rory, can you hear me?”

There is no response. No crackle of static. Just endless, terrible silence, 

“ _ Amy, _ ” the Doctor roars, and then he spins, but there’s nothing he can do either. Nothing any of them can do. 

He freezes very slowly. It is painful, terrible, the taste of blood vibrant at the back of her throat; the way the ice starts in his eyes and climbs outward, until there is nothing left. Until he is a mask made of porcelain with nothing behind it, skin translucent paper, a sculpture made of shards of glass. So fragile it could blow away in the breeze, and yet all that’s keeping the monsters back. 

“Okay,” he says tonelessly. “I really don’t know what to do now.” He brings his hands up, outlining in the air the way he always does - maybe trying to define a boundless concept, or get across something he cannot say in words, a flutter of fingers and misdirection 

Arkytior thinks he’s just doing what he always does.

Hiding in plain sight.

“That’s a new feeling,” he adds thoughtfully, and the smile on his face is one of the bad ones. 

Idris’s fingers tighten around hers. 

And then just when she thinks the ice is about to break he shifts, moving even though she can almost see the sharp rigid broken-glass edges cutting into his skin, forcing forward. He shakes his head, a quick convulsive movement, not looking at either of them, and then he’s running. 

(Again. Or not again. Still.)

(Has he ever  _ stopped  _ running?)

[=|=]

Rory comes around the corner, following the sound of sobs.

He finds Amy crouching on the metal floor, grabbing at some invisible thing, tears pouring down her cheeks; her voice is a low, feral, mindless thing, his name a hoarse and sonorous chant choking her, stopping her breath, until all she can do is rasp out a keening, broken scream. Her eyes are shattered, empty, rivulets of blood carving canyons into her face.

“Amy?” he whispers, torn between fear and grief and shock.

Amy spins, stares, eyes wide and haunting, reaches out to touch him like he’s a ghost, a mirage, like she’s dying of thirst and he’s an oasis she’ll never reach. “Rory? But you  _ died _ .”

“It’s the House,” he tells her, gritting his teeth to keep the fury from his voice. He wraps his arms around her, holding her close, feeling her heart racing wildly like it’s trying to gallop its way out of her thin and beautiful body. “It’s messing with our heads. Come on, we have to keep moving.”

Amy nods, trusting and entirely focused, pushing away the pain and the tears and the horror, and Rory’s heart swells with love for this amazing woman, vying with the steadily-rising rage directed at House.

He is Rory Williams-Pond, the Last Centurion, and  _ no one messes with his wife. _


	10. The Doctor's Wife--Part Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow okay so this is really long and i'm kinda impressed with myself? anyway, here, have an almost 5k word chapter. sorry it's been so long; personal stuff happening and my mental health kinda went all to shit and i haven't felt like writing Doctor Who in quite a while. but i'm back now! and i'm super excited to finish this fic, so yeah.  
> this is pretty Arkytior-centric, sorry about that, but what can i say? it was a lot of fun to write.  
> please, do leave comments--i'd love to hear what you think!  
> (also just a quick note to say that this entire episode is 13,506 words long, which is _crazy_!!!)

“It’s gone,” the Doctor announces, heavy and tired, back in the same room where they first met House. Arkytior walks up beside him, projecting [comfort] he doesn’t even seem to notice; yet when she reaches for his hand, he turns instead, wrapping his arms around her and holding tight.

“Eaten?” Idris asks, quiet.

The Doctor’s head shakes once, a convulsive rejection. “No. It left. Not eaten, hijacked.” And then he’s stepping back, moving again, driven by desperate  _ need. _ “But why?”

“It’s time for us both to go, and keep together,” Auntie’s voice interrupts; Arkytior turns sharply to see the pair entering the room.

“Go?” she asks, confused, because there’s no way off this planet. “What do you mean,  _ go? _ Go where?”

“Well, we’re dying, my love,” Auntie says, slow as syrup, and smiles vapidly. “It’s time for Auntie and Uncle to pop off.”

“I’m against it,” Uncle inserts, vaguely.

“It’s your fault, isn’t it, sweets?” Auntie continues, focusing on the Doctor. “Because you told House it was the last TARDIS. House can’t feed on them if there’s none more coming, can he?”

Uncle smiles. “So now he’s off to your universe to find more TARDISes.”

“It won’t.” Hard, cold, low; the Warrior’s barely-controlled power and rage in each syllable.

Auntie waves a hand casually, as though that doesn’t matter. “Oh, it’ll think of something,” she assures him, and then collapses.

“Actually, I feel fine,” Uncle decides, and then he, too, falls. Dead.

“Not dead,” the Doctor chokes out, moving to investigate, running his sonic over their bodies. “You can’t just  _ die!” _ Sheer [frustration] spills out of him, then, and he clenches his fists and closes his eyes.

“We need to go where I landed,” the TARDIS cuts in, urgency in her voice, already moving; she twines her fingers around Arkytior’s and tugs, and the Time Lady follows, numb and shaken. “Doctor, quickly!”

“Why?” he asks, and turns, and--

(a Storm flashes in his eyes.)

Arkytior flinches, almost against her will, the sharp pain of paradox pressing into her, and the hiss-whine of anti-time crackling like static behind his voice, and something shutters in his eyes. 

“Because we are there in three minutes,” Idris says, her voice cutting through the  moment like shattering glass. “We need to go now,” and she turns to walk again and stumbles. “ _ Ow. _ Roughly how long do these bodies last?”

The Doctor’s there, on her other side, helping her stand, and his voice is flat when he replies with, “You’re dying.”

“Yes, of  _ course _ I’m dying,” she says, but there’s a bit of softness in her tone. “I don’t belong in a flesh body, I could blow the casing in no time.” And then: “No, stop it. Don’t get  _ emotional. _ Hmm, that’s what the orangey girl says,” she adds, thoughtfully; then her demeanor snaps back into urgent focus with an almost-audible  _ crack. _ “You’re the Doctor,  _ focus.” _

Idris tugs on Arkytior, again, and the three of them start walking (slow, slower than they should be, but the TARDIS is still shaky and unstable, and if the human body dies then what happens to the eleventh-dimensional being inside it?). “On what?” the Dreamer asks, at the same time as the Doctor says, “ _ How?” _

He continues, static-sharp and hissing. “I’m a madman with a box, without a box. I’m stuck down a plughole at the end of the universe on a stupid old junkyard.”

And then it hits him like a lightning strike, his whole body snapping upright with a jerk and a  _ click, _ and he dances a few paces ahead of them and spins back, grinning. “Oooooh.”

“Oooooh what?” The TARDIS cocks her head, childlike curiosity glittering in her dark eyes.

“I’m  _ not,” _ he says, and there’s almost a thread of (wild, insane) laughter in his voice.

“Not what?”

“Because it’s not a junkyard. Don’t you see?” The Doctor laughs, this time. “It’s  _ not a junkyard.” _

Idris frowns. “What is it, then?”

And Arkytior gets it.

“It’s a  _ TARDIS _ junkyard,” she breathes, and then laughs. “Oh, that’s brilliant!”

“Come on,” he says, turns to run again, and then stops. “Wait! Do you have a name?”

Idris giggles, shoots Arkytior a look. “A thousand years,  _ finally _ he asks!”

He looks helplessly between the two of them. “But what do I  _ call _ you?”

The TARDIS considers. “I think you call me…  _ Sexy.” _

He chokes, splutters, a truly admirable moment of [panic] leaking through the bond as he gets out, “Only when we’re alone!”

And Idris, positively beaming, turns to Arkytior and says, “You can call me Sexy, too.”

[=|=]

It’s a good idea, it really is. But it’s not going to work.

The problem isn’t the fact that the scattered timeship corpses aren’t all different models; no, with two Time Lords and sonic technology and a working TARDIS matrix, that can be overcome. The problem is more the lack of a block-transfer shell, the lack of any kind of Vortex shielding, the lack of a  _ consciousness. _ Without a TARDIS’s soul, a timeship will never fly, or not  _ well, _ at least; not one constructed out of so many ramshackle bits like this one.

But they’ll cross that bridge when they come to it.

“Bond the tube directly into the Tachyon Diverter,” Idris is saying as Arkytior comes back, her arms full of supplies.

“Yes, yes,” the Doctor answers distractedly, holding his sonic to the junction between a tube and a piece of the slowly-developing console. “I  _ have _ actually rebuilt a TARDIS from scratch before, you know. I know what I’m doing.”

“You’re like a nine-year-old trying to rebuild a motorbike in his bedroom,” Idris says back, shaking her head. “And you  _ never _ read the instructions.”

“I always read the instructions,” he says, dismayed, and makes a face.

Arkytior laughs, stepping onto the rough metal floor and depositing the tubes and wires beside her feet, kneeling down to crawl underneath the console. “Oh, yes, and then you disregard 98% of them anyway,” she calls up, pulling her sonic out of her jacket pocket and adjusting the setting. “Whereas  _ I _ always followed proper TT capsule procedure, which I knew because I  _ read the manual.” _

“I read the manual!” he cries back, vaguely horrified.

“And then you threw it into a supernova,” she says with a snort. She lifts a bundle of wires and sonics them in place, careful not to get her face too close to the sparks.

“I had a good reason!”

“There’s a sign on my door,” the TARDIS interjects. “You have been walking past it for at  _ least _ a thousand years. What does it say?”

The Doctor swallows. “That’s not--instructions,” he protests weakly.

“There’s an instruction at the bottom. What does it say?”

“... Pull to open.”

“And what do you do?”

“I  _ push,”  _ he says.

“Every single time,” she says, and sighs longsufferingly. “Police boxes open  _ out the way.” _

“I  _ think,”  _  he starts, sulking, “that I have earned the right to open my front doors any way I want.”

_ “Your _ front doors? Do you have any idea how  _ childish _ that sounds?”

“You are not my mother,” he says petulantly.

Idris huffs. “And you are not my child.”

(Underneath the console, Arkytior stifles a laugh.)

“You know,” the Doctor says abruptly, “since we’re talking with  _ mouths, _ not really an opportunity that comes along very often, I just want to say, you know… you’ve never been very reliable.”

“And you have?” the TARDIS retorts.

“You didn’t always take me where I wanted to go.”

The timeship shakes her head, and her voice is soft when she speaks. “No, but I always took you where you  _ needed _ to go.”

Arkytior gets to her feet in time to see the wonder spread across the Doctor’s face. “You  _ did, _ ” he says, and his eyes light up. “Look at us  _ talking. _ Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could  _ always _ talk, even when you’re stuck inside the box?”

“You know I’m not constructed that way. I exist across all Time and space, and you talk and run around and bring home  _ strays,” _ and then her face contorts and her knees buckle and she falls.

Arkytior moves at the same second as the Doctor does, catching Idris before she hits the ground and helping her stand again. “Are you okay?” the Dreamer asks, concerned.

The TARDIS shakes her head. “One of the kidneys has already failed. It doesn’t matter. We need to finish assembling the console.”

“Using a console without a proper shell isn’t going to be very safe,” Arkytior says conversationally, twirling her sonic and getting back to work.

“This body has about eighteen minutes left to live. The universe we’re in will reach Absolute Zero in three hours. Safe is relative.”

She swallows, although she’s not sure whether it’s the words or the calm factual manner in which Idris says them that bothers her, and tightens her grip on her sonic.

It’s the Doctor who responds, after a tense heartsbeat. “Then we better get a move on, eh, Old Girl?”

[=|=]

It takes far too long for Arkytior’s comfort to finish the console, but at last it’s completed.

“How is this going to make it through the Rift?” she asks as she helps the Doctor install the time rotor, the last piece.

“Do you ever wonder why I chose you, all those years ago?” Idris asks abruptly, and the Doctor frowns, not looking away from his work.

“I chose you. You were  _ unlocked.” _

“Of course I was,” she replies airily. “I wanted to see the universe, so I stole a Time Lord and ran away. And  _ you _ were the only one mad enough.” Her eyes flicker over to Arkytior, and when she smiles it’s sad. “I wanted to take you, too,” she says quietly, “but you were lost, and I couldn’t find you. Until you went into the watch.”

Arkytior works it out quickly;  _ you’re cleverer than you like to pretend, _ Romana had said once (had never said, now, but there’s still a memory in her mind and so those words were  _ real),  _ and it’s true, she has an Arcalian’s mind forced into a Prydonian-orange mold, she’s  _ clever. _ And so she understands almost immediately what Idris means (after the destruction of Gallifrey, they would’ve been alone in the hivemind, Theta Sigma all alone in his head (even without a Matrix connection, he would’ve still felt all those presences in the back of his mind, and felt them all wink out at once, trauma great enough to cause a regeneration), and the telepathic whisper of a Chameleon Arched Time Lord is too weak for another Time Lord to sense but not for a TARDIS, especially when there are no other TARDISes and Time Lords to distract from that whisper).

“You came looking for me,” she breathes.

Idris nods. “And I found you. But you wouldn’t  _ see _ the watch, even when I tried to tell you about it.”

“Look at that!” the Doctor crows, cutting the conversation short. “Perfect. What could possibly go wrong?”

A piece falls off the completed console, clatters to the metal floor. 

“That always happens,” he hastens to say, and dismisses it. He presses a few buttons, throws a switch, pulls a lever, and--

Nothing.

“Come  _ on,” _ he says, “there’s Rift energy  _ everywhere, _ let’s go!”

This time, as he pulls the dematerialization lever, there’s a shower of sparks, and he groans.

“What’s wrong?” Arkytior asks, even though she can already guess at the problem.

“It can’t hold a  _ charge. _ It can’t even start. There’s no power.” Hopelessly, slumping: “I’ve got  _ nothing.” _

“Oh, my beautiful idiot,” the TARDIS says, and smiles, warm and bright and pure. “You have what you’ve always had.”

The Doctor lifts his head, confused hope blooming in his eyes.

“You’ve got  _ me.” _

And then, as the realization’s still dawning in his eyes, the TARDIS kisses a finger and touches it to the time rotor, and floods the console with golden light.

(In the distance, a Wolf howls.)

They dematerialize.

[=|=]

Rory’s halfway up a ladder, Amy just behind him, the sickly green-glow of House all around them, when the headache hits.

He lets out a groan, hooks one arm around the metal bar nearest his face and presses his fingers to his temples, squeezing his eyes shut. There’s an odd, disconcerting impression of  _ gold, _ and then static bursts like electricity across his brain, and then an image resolves itself.

“Rory, what’s wrong?” Amy asks from below him. The words echo, like they’ve been shouted down a long tunnel, and he sucks in a breath.

“It’s like… I’m getting a  _ message,” _ he gets out, and then his vision goes white.

[hello, Pretty] echoes  _ at _ him, from the gold-dust woman with the dark eyes (mad, she’s the mad one, she kissed the Dreamer, he thinks he remembers).

“What the  _ hell _ is that?” he tries to say, but all he manages to signal back is a furious [?????].

[amusement] filters through to him from…  _ somewhere, _ and then a voice that sounds like the Doctor says [don’t worry, telepathic messaging--that’s  _ rory] _ and there’s [amusement] from somewhere  _ else _ now and he can’t--he can’t--[can’tcan’tcan’tcan’tcan’tcan’t]

[be  _ careful, _ theta, he’s just a mindblind human] and the pressure fades, a bit, and he can breathe again.

[you have to go to the old control room] comes from the gold-dust mad lady, again. [i’m putting the route in your head. when you get there, use the purple slider on the nearest panel to lower the shields.]

[the  _ pretty one?] _ the Doctor sends, and [confusion].

[you’ll have about twelve seconds before the room goes into phase with the invading Matrix. i’ll send you the pass key when you get there. good luck.]

There’s a flash of [careful] from the mindvoice Rory  _ thinks _ belongs to the Dreamer, and then there’s static, and gold again, and then nothing.

“... Wow,” he says, slowly opening his eyes, and lets out a shaky breath he hadn’t even known he was holding.

“What was that?” Amy asks.

“It was that woman,” Rory tells her, daring to glance down. “That mad woman and the Dreamer and the Doctor.”

“The Doctor?”

“We have to keep going,” he says, determined (he is the Last Centurion and he protected the Doctor for two thousand years and he is not about to stop now), and he takes a deep breath and starts to climb once more.

[=|=]

“How’s he going to be able to take down the shields, anyway?” the Doctor asks, clutching the edge of the console for dear life as it tumbles through the Rift. “House is in the control room.”

“I directed him to one of the old control rooms,” Idris answers.

“There aren’t any old control rooms,” he says, frowning. “They were all deleted or remodelled.”

“I archive them, for neatness.” The TARDIS smiles, then stumbles as the console shakes around them; Arkytior grabs her arm to steady her. “I’ve got about thirty of them now.”

The Doctor blinks. “But I’ve only changed the desktop, what, a dozen times?”

“So far, yes.”

“... You can’t archive something that hasn’t happened yet…”

_ “You _ can’t,” Idris says.

Arkytior snorts.

“Ha!” The Doctor cheers, watching something on the makeshift screen he’s rigged up. “You’re doing it, you sexy thing!”

“See?” Idris grins. “You  _ do _ call me that? Is it my name?”

He glances over at Arkytior, then back at Idris. “You bet it is,” he says, and she laughs.

Impulsively, Arkytior reaches out and lays a hand on Idris’s arm. The TARDIS brings one hand up to cover Arkytior’s, and then the Dreamer blinks as the timeship’s eyes glow gold.

[[[love, endless and unbroken, a timeless ocean]]]

“I was your heart once, do you remember?” the TARDIS asks, quiet below the Doctor’s mutters as he struggles to keep the console on track. “Or maybe it was the other way around.”

“I remember,” Arkytior says quietly, and very carefully  _ doesn’t _ project the endless screaming pain of all her atoms burning and ripping apart and reforming, exploding over and over and over again, always and forever.

“Oh!” 

The Doctor falls silent, looks up. “What?”

Idris’s eyes glow gold, and with her hand still touching Arkytior’s, the Time Lady can feel the message echoing out. [crimson. eleven. delight. petrichor.]

“The pass key,” she explains, and then steps away to help the Doctor pilot. “We have to be ready--”

“They did it,” the TARDIS interrupts. “Shields down.” She closes her dark eyes again.

The Dreamer spares a moment of concern for the timeship, but then she’s forced to focus on piloting--TARDIS consoles are made for six pilots, and even though this one’s been pieced together from scraps it’s still somewhat of the original design. There are so many switches and buttons and levers that need to move just right, and buttons to press when the instruments are at a certain place (or when the console shudders just  _ so, _ or a myriad of other things), and she can barely keep up.

And then the entire console  _ shudders, _ throwing all of them around (she catches herself on the edge of the console, but it’s a close thing, and Idris falls to the floor completely), and Idris rasps out, “It’s not going to hold--”

And then the console materializes inside the old, familiar console room.

It’s just as she remembers it: metal grating, the jump seat, the coral struts arcing up to the roof; the Doctor’s “grunge phase”, she remembers someone saying, once.

“Doctor,” Amy says, worried and showing it; her eyes dart from Arkytior to Idris (who’s standing again, but not easily) and then back to the door.

“Not good,” Idris says, leaning on the Doctor as they step out of the makeshift console, “not good at all. How do you walk around in these things?”

“We’re not quite there yet,” he says, “just hold on.” And then, louder: “Amy, this is, well, she’s my TARDIS,” and that same wonder lights up his face again. “Except she’s a woman. She’s a woman, and she’s my TARDIS.”

“She’s… the  _ TARDIS?” _

_ “And _ she’s a woman.” He grins. “She’s a woman and she’s the TARDIS.”

Amy considers this for a moment, then says, dryly, “Did you wish  _ really hard?” _

And the Doctor  _ blushes. _

“Shut up,” he says, “not like  _ that.” _

“Hello,” Idris says, and gives a little wave. “I’m… Sexy.”

Arkytior laughs, Amy gives the Doctor a knowing look, and he blushes. “Uh, still shut up?”

That’s when a deep, smooth voice says, “The environment has been breached. Nephew, kill them all.”

Rory blinks, looks around, and then… “Where’s Nephew?” he asks, slowly, frowning.

“He was standing right where you materialized,” Amy says, nodding at the makeshift TARDIS console.

Arkytior winces. “He’s been….  _ redistributed,” _ she says, careful, and sighs a bit.

“Which means?” Rory asks a bit nervously.

The Doctor grimaces. “You’re breathing him.”

“Oh, come  _ on,” _ Amy huffs out.

He sighs, shakes his head. “Another Ood I failed to save.”

“Doctor, Dreamer,” House’s voice echoes, “I did not expect you.”

“Well, that’s me all over, isn’t it? Lovely old unexpected me.”

“The big question is, now that you’re here, how to dispose of you? I could play with gravity,” and suddenly an unbearably heavy weight drags Arkytior down to the cold grating, slams her into it and  _ presses _ until she wants to scream, and part of her mind is busy calculating the effect this might have on Idris and how it might hasten the… three minutes her body has to live.

And then the gravity returns to normal, thankfully, and House is speaking again. “Or I could evacuate the air from this room and watch you choke.”

Arkytior engages her respiratory bypass immediately; by the expressions on Amy and Rory’s faces, she knows the air is gone, and she rushes to fix that (if she can). “You really don’t want to do that,” she manages.

(and what if he doesn’t  _ listen, _ what if they die here, now, she has regenerations to spare but Theta only has one left and she can’t, she  _ can’t _ live without him, and in her mind he’s falling, falling, the astronaut shoots three times and there’s a blaze of golden light and then another shot and--)

“Why shouldn’t I just… kill you now?”

(It takes her too long to realize it’s House speaking)

It’s the Doctor who speaks up this time. “Because then I won’t be able to help you! Listen to your engines. Just listen to them. You don’t have the thrust and you  _ know _ it. Right now I’m your only hope for getting out of your little bubble through the Rift and into mine, and mine’s the one with the food in it.”

The air returns to the room in a rush; Amy and Rory cough and gasp greedily, slowly climbing back to their feet, but Idris doesn’t move, barely even breathes, and it’s  _ too soon, _ too soon--

Before she even realizes she’s moving, Arkytior’s kneeling on the grating next to the TARDIS, gently stroking dark hair back from her face. “Water, water,” the timeship whispers, her dark eyes flickering open. 

Rory kneels on the other side, lays the back of his hand on her forehead, and then he looks up and his eyes meet Arkytior’s and what she sees is not good.

“All you have to do,” the Doctor’s saying, somewhere in the background, “is promise not to kill us.”

“You can’t be serious,” Amy says flatly.

“I’m  _ very _ serious,” he says back. “I’m sure it’s an entity of its word.”

“Doctor,” Rory starts, and swallows. “She’s burning up. She’s asking for water.”

He looks over, and it’s only Arkytior who can see the shattered glass in his eyes. “Hey,” he says, soft and serious, “hang in there, Old Girl. Not long now. It’ll be over soon.”

One minute, eight seconds.

Arkytior swallows, reaches for the bond, signals [hurry] and imbues the one word with all the [urgency] she can muster.

“I always liked it when you call me Old Girl,” Idris murmurs, watching the Doctor with flecks of gold in her eyes.

“You want me to give my word?” House asks. “Fine. I promise.”

Forty-three seconds.

“Fine, I trust you,” the Doctor says, rapidly, the words spilling out of his mouth all in a rush. “Just delete, oh, around thirty percent of the TARDIS rooms, you’ll free up enough thrust to make it through. Activate subroutine sigma-nine.”

Thirty-one seconds.

(and the countdown doesn’t stop)

“Why would you tell me this?”

“Because we want to get back to our universe as badly as you do,” the Doctor says, lying through his teeth, “and because I’m  _ nice.” _

A pause.

(twenty-four seconds)

“Yes, I can delete rooms,” House says, thoughtfully, “and I can also rid myself of vermin if I delete this room first.”

Arkytior silently pleads with him to hurry.

“Thank you, Doctor. Very helpful. Goodbye, Time Lords. Goodbye, little humans. Goodbye, Idris.”

(twelve seconds)

There’s a flash of bright light (stretching out for an eternity, and over in the blink of an eye) and the room dissolves around them--

Reforming into the familiar console room with the bright, warm lights and the glass floor and the staircase.

“I mean,” the Doctor says conversationally, “you  _ could _ just do that, but it won’t work. Hardwired fail-safe. Living things from rooms that are deleted are automatically deposited in the main control room. But thanks for the lift!”

Idris’s hands come up, grab onto Arkytior’s, and then everything outside fades into meaningless static.

[[[the only water in the forest is the river]]]

[[[the  _ river]]] _

[[river]]

[what river?] Arkytior sends back, desperate, confused, telepathic centers screaming as the full weight of the timeship’s mind overwhelms her. [what forest? i don’t--]

[[[the only water]]]

[[[RIVER--]]]

“Fear me,” House is saying, ominous and black, “I’ve killed hundreds of Time Lords.”

“Fear me,” the Doctor says back, and it’s not the Doctor’s dark cadences she hears but the Warrior’s, crackling with the hiss-whine of anti-time, “I’ve killed  _ all _ of them.”

A pause, in which Idris sucks in one last rasping breath and then fades away beneath Arkytior’s hands.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he says, and this time his voice is completely flat, expressionless. “You’ve completely won. Oh, you can kill us in oodles of really inventive ways, but before you do kill us allow me, my bondmate, the Dreamer, and our friends Amy and Rory to congratulate you on being an absolutely worthy opponent.”

“Congratulations,” Amy says sarcastically, applauding, the sound harsh and jarring in the hushed quiet of the console room.

Arkytior tries to speak, but she’s still reeling from the telepathic message, and nothing comes out, just an indistinct noise that has the Doctor turning to look at her, concern etched across his gaze. Then his eyes find Idris’ body and harden again, the moment of emotion gone.

“Yep, you’ve defeated us. Me, my bondmate, and our lovely friends here, and last but definitely not least, the TARDIS Matrix Herself, a living consciousness you  _ ripped _ out of this very control room and locked into a human body. And  _ look _ at Her.”

“Doctor,” Rory says, quiet, “she’s stopped breathing.”

“Enough,” House says, and there’s a bit of fear in his voice, now. “That is enough.”

“No,” the Doctor snaps back, “it’s  _ never _ enough. You  _ forced _ the TARDIS into a body so She’d burn out safely a long way from this control room. A flesh body can’t hold the TARDIS Matrix and live.  _ Look _ at her body, House.”

A pause, and then: “And you think I should mourn her?”

“No, I think you should be very,  _ very _ careful about what you let back into this control room,” he hisses. “You took Her from Her home, but now She’s back in the box again, and She’s  _ free.” _

It doesn’t  _ feel _ like a regeneration, to her timesense, but the golden energy that suddenly spirals from Idris’s body has the same look to it. The artron-gold wisps stream into the console and then radiate out, filling the rest of the TARDIS, chasing away the sickly green-glow of the House.

“No! Doctor, stop this! Stop this  _ now,” _ House cries, a sound of pain rippling through the room. 

“Oh, look at my girl,” the Doctor says in response. “Look at Her go. Bigger on the inside. You see, House?”

“Make her stop…”

“That’s your problem,” he continues. “Size of a planet, but inside you’re just so  _ small.”  _

“Make it  _ stop.” _ House’s voice is weaker now, fading away, still groaning in pain, and the Doctor  _ smirks. _

“Finish him off, girl.”

And then there’s nothing, just silence.

Arkytior shudders, still kneeling, knees pressing into the glass hard enough to hurt; she doesn’t look up until she hears Idris’s voice, echo-y and soft, and then she snaps her head up so fast her neck  _ cracks. _

Idris hovers above the stairs, all outlined in glowing regeneration-gold, her eyes canvassing the room without seeing anything. “Doctor, are you there? It’s so dark in here.”

“I’m here,” he says, rushing to stand in front of her.

“I’ve been looking for a word. A big, complicated word, but so  _ sad. _ I’ve found it now.”

“What word?”

“Alive.” That sweet, pure smile blooms across her face. “I’m  _ alive.” _

“Alive isn’t sad,” the Doctor chokes out.

“It’s sad when it’s over.”

Arkytior sucks in a ragged breath, feeling tears beginning to trickle down her cheeks. The Doctor’s gone silent; his end of the bond sealed tight, no emotion leaking through. She rises, somehow, but stays back--knowing this is for him. After all, it’s always been the Doctor and the TARDIS; she’s just an imposter, not a pilot, just someone who was stupid enough to look directly into the Heart of the TARDIS, and how long have they been bonded? At least a thousand years, not even counting War-time (when Theta’s not lying about his age), and compared to how long she’s known him (but he’d said,  _ i can’t stop loving you, _ and that was during the War, that was the  _ Warrior _ who’d said that); no, she doesn’t belong here.

_ (and somewhere in the back of her mind, he’s still falling, crashing onto the sand, and no golden light dancing under his skin, falling and falling and falling and falling--) _

“I’ll always be here,” Idris continues, “but this is the Time We Talked, and now even that is coming to an end.” And then she stops, and looks around, again. “My Rose? Are you here?”

Arkytior jerks forward, shocked, stammers out, “I’m here, Sexy,” (because why not, Idris had said,  _ you can call me Sexy too) _ .

“You are my Wolf,” the TARDIS says, smiling gentle and warm, “and I am your Heart.” Her gaze flicks back to the Doctor. “There’s something I didn’t get to say to you.”

“Goodbye?” he asks, his voice cracking just a little.

Idris shakes her head. “No. I just wanted to say hello.” And she  _ beams. _ “Hello, Doctor. It’s so very,  _ very _ nice to meet you.”

And he breaks.

“Please, I don’t want you to-- _ please,” _ he whispers, tears running freely down his face, and then Idris’s body shimmers and fades away.

Arkytior tugs him around to face her, pulls him into her arms, and presses into his neck; he buries his face in her hair and holds on tight, and doesn’t let go for a long, long time.


End file.
